Are Trump’s Actions To Blame For Coronavirus Spread?

Over the last 3 months there has been quite a few criticisms of whether or not Trump acted fast enough to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus. With so many memes, rumors and lack of fact checking, I set out on the task of deciding for myself.

When one delves into various medias from Left to Alt Right, and starts to build a timeline it becomes increasingly apparent how adjectives can effect the full story. Even more apparent (at least to me) how the blame game runs. Even more so, how attacks on the media are detrimental. The question is was all media FAKE NEWS as Trump claims.

What would have happened if we only listened to FOX News? 

Or Rush Limbaugh or Breitbart or the Evangelists?

I consider myself a ‘Tweener’ with both right and left center leanings. Quite frankly, I am appalled at the amount of hate and the language that is portrayed in todays Social Media.

First, nobody blames Trump for the coronavirus. This is not about blaming something that he really did not have control over. But he did have control over his actions and the results.

This timeline below evolved from more than just the COVID-19 timeline to encompass other events in the United States. While long, hopefully you can get through the timeline and judge for yourself if the actions that Trump took were appropriate.

2006 and 2017 Time Magazine writes articles about both Global War warming and Pandemics

2014 Trump posted close to 100 tweets criticizing and, for lack of a better word, weaponizing, the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola crisis. Trump’s tweets included the observation “I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent.” He called Obama “stupid” and suggested that he “personally embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!” He also callously tweeted that an American medical worker who had contracted Ebola while abroad shouldn’t be allowed back home, arguing that the person should instead “suffer the consequences!” (Source)

2015 Billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates did – publicly warning in 2015 that most countries are unprepared for the real probability of an infectious pandemic, and asserting “if anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war.” In this special report, MSNBC’s Ari Melber reports on Gates’ past warnings, his public.

2016 NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfield Boyce was allowed to visit one facility visit warehouse; The inventory includes millions of doses of vaccines against bioterrorism agents like smallpox, antivirals in case of a deadly flu pandemic, medicines used to treat radiation sickness and burns, chemical agent antidotes, wound care supplies, IV fluids and antibiotics. Full Story on Fact Check

2016, there were at least six warehouses holding “approximately $7 billion in products across more than 900 separate line items,” according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

1/13/17  The joint Obama-Trump transition teams runs exercise for pandemic preparedness.  Obama team runs the Trump transition team through a series of pandemic-scenarios. The transition documents, obtained by POLITICO, show that the purpose of the exercise is to familiarize the incoming team with “domestic incident management policy and practices” in the face of major crises.

• Trump administration attendees include: Steven Mnuchin, Rep. Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Ben Carson, Elaine Chao, Stephen Miller, Marc Short, Reince Priebus (resigned), Rex Tillerson (fired), Gen. James Mattis (fired), Rep. Ryan Zinke (resigned), Sen. Jeff Sessions (resigned), Sen. Dan Coats (fired), Andrew Puzder (not confirmed), Dr. Tom Price (resigned), Gov. Rick Perry (resigned), Dr. David Shulkin (fired), Gen. John Kelly (resigned), Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Linda McMahon (resigned), Sean Spicer (fired), Joe Hagin (resigned), Joshua Pitcock (resigned), Tom Bossert (fired), KT McFarland (resigned), Gen. Michael Flynn (awaiting criminal sentencing), Gary Cohn (resigned), Katie Walsh (resigned), and Rick Dearborn (resigned).

May- 2017 Trump proposes cutting over $277 million in pandemic-preparedness funding. Congress, in bipartisan action, rejects the funding cuts.

“Cutting the Centers for Disease Control, I think, leaves you very vulnerable and the American people very vulnerable,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). “Sometime in the president’s term, you will have a pandemic.”

2017 and 2018, Billionaire Bill Gates mets repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

2/9/18 Trump signs bill that cuts $1.35 billion in funding for Prevention and Public Health Fund at the CDC. Prevention and Public Health Fund, established in 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act.

2/13/18 Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats in written testimony before Congress

• The increase in frequency and diversity of reported disease outbreaks—such as dengue and Zika—probably will continue through 2018, including the potential for a severe global health emergency that could lead to major economic and societal disruptions, strain governmental and international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support. A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility.’

4/9/18 John Bolton starts as National Security Adviser.

The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern. Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no.” Luciana Borio, NSC director of medical and biodefense preparedness, symposium at Emory University to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

4/10/18 Bolton fires Homeland Security Advisor, Tom Bossert the  White House Homeland Security. Bossert “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks.

4/10/20, the National Security Council’s, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer global pandemic director left his post abruptly; then his entire team was disbanded by former national security adviser John Bolton.

• The Trump administration has yet to refill any of those positions, leaving huge vulnerabilities in global pandemic preparedness. 
• Fact check post: An NSC spokesman told the Washington Post in May 2018 that the administration “will continue to address these issues with the same resolve under the new structure.”

5/7/18 White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs to eliminate $252 million committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire

• Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds later. But
• But reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHs, the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated….
•  global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.
• 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go un-replaced. Source: Foreign Policy  

5/10/18  Experts warn that the U.S. government would be unable to respond effectively to a pandemic. The tweet, dated May 10, 2018, read, “When the next pandemic occurs (and make no mistake, it will) and the federal government is unable to respond in a coordinated and effective fashion to protect the lives of US citizens and others, this decision by John Bolton and Donald Trump will be why.” Source: Snopes Fact Check 

September 2018 Senator Sherrod Brown writes letter to the president written the day the pandemic-response coordinator left,  warned, “There needs to be one person at the NSC, with the backing of a capable team, who can coordinate across agencies to ensure that we have the resources necessary to guard against and respond to any outbreak that threatens the United States.

September 2018 Trump administration fails to follow through with an Obama-era project designed to protect against medical supply shortages during pandemics. (Source)

September 2018  The Department of Health and Human Services diverts funding from the CDC to pay for housing detained immigrant children.

• HHS Secretary Alex Azar reallocates $266 million of funds from the CDC to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

9/18/18 President Trump issues a Presidential Memorandum and National Biodefense Strategy designed to ensure a comprehensive and coordinated approach to biological incidents.The National Biodefense Strategy outlines a high-level roadmap of the U.S. response to biological threats and incidents. including testing.

December 2016 through March 2019, the most recent data available from the Office of Personnel Management. 

• CDC’s staff has decreased by 591 positions, or 5.4%, 

1/29/19  The Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment warns that the U.S. is vulnerable to a global pandemic.

April 2019: HHS Secretary Alex Azar says what keeps everyone in the Biodefense world up at night is the threat of a pandemic flu. (Full speech)

July 2019 The Trump administration eliminates an American public health position designed to detect disease outbreaks in China.

• The CDC removes an American public health official stationed in Beijing within China’s disease control agency. The official, Dr. Linda Quick, worked with  Chinese epidemiologists to help detect and contain diseases.
• She has never been replaced.

September 2019 The President’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) warns that an influenza pandemic may cause tremendous health and economic losses. 

• The CEA warns that there will be large health and economic losses if an influenza-like pandemic occurs in the United States. (See Warning)
• Pandemic influenza is a low-probability but high-cost problem that should not be ignored.

October 2019: The Trump administration ends a months-long simulation, code-named “Crimson Contagion,” designed to respond to a global influenza pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services determines that the U.S. is underprepared, underfunded, and under-coordinated to fight an influenza-like pandemic. (Key Findings) (Do Not Distribute) 

October 25, 2019   Trump Administration opted to discontinue a Bush-era program expanded under Obama—called “Predict”—that monitored the threat of animal-born diseases to humans, the possible origin point of the novel coronavirus. The program was behind the discovery of more than 1,000 viruses, including an Ebola strain. (NY Times) 

11/17/19 Possible first case of COVID-19 emerges in Hubei province, China.

November 2019 A report went out to restore the position on the NSC as one of seven key changes to better protect the American public from global health threats. Center for Strategic & International Studies 

November-December 2019  U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting…. The NCMI report was made available widely to people authorized to access intelligence community alerts. Following the report’s release, other intelligence community bulletins began circulating through confidential channels across the government around Thanksgiving, the sources said. Those analyses said China’s leadership knew the epidemic was out of control even as it kept such crucial information from foreign governments and public health agencies. Source 

Mid-to-late December 2019: A team of government workers in Alberta, Canada responds to reports of an “influenza-like virus” in China by increasing their emergency stockpile of hospital masks, gloves, and gowns.

• Alberta Health Services supply procurement team doubles their normal order of hospital PPE

12/18/20 Trump Impeached by House of Representatives

Day 1 

Dec. 31, 2019. Chinese Health official notify WHO of 41 patients who have a unique pneumonia.

1/1/2020 Huanan Seafood Wholesale in China closes

1/2/20 Trump kills Qassem Soleimani in a January 2 drone strike in Baghdad. Some Congress express outrage that the president failed to consult Congress in advance of the strike, seeing it as overreach of executive power.

1/3/20:  Trump administration filed a brief in June Medical Services v. Gee, urging the Court to allow a Louisiana abortion access law to go into effect. The civil rights community filed briefs urging the Court to strike down the restrictive law, highlighting the law’s impact on Black women.

January 2020 U.S. intelligence agencies provide a detailed explanation in the President’s Daily Brief, and issue classified reports about the virus; senior U.S. officials begin to form a task force.

•  Deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger receives a call from a Hong Kong epidemiologist who informs of a ferocious outbreak of a new virus that has spread far more quickly than the Chinese government is admitting.

1/6/20 CDC Director Robert Redfield offers to send a CDC team to China.

• China says no

1/7/20 China sends Genetic Map of virus to world community

1/ 7/20 the C.D.C. creates an “incident management system” for the coronavirus and advised travelers to Wuhan to take precautions.

• 1/20/20 C.D.C. had developed its own test, and deployed it to detect the country’s first coronavirus case.

1/7/20–  the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a proposal that would gut the agency’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. HUD’s proposal would leave people of color, women, and other protected communities already harmed by unfair and unequal housing policies at a further disadvantage.

1/8/20 CDC issues warning about COVID-19 Virus 

1/9/20 China publicly identifies new “pneumonia-like” virus. 

• China publicly identifies the pneumonia-like virus as a novel  coronavirus that is the cause of the pneumonia-like outbreak in Wuhan.

1/9/20 Trump Campaign Rally

1/9/20  Trump insinuates in a tweet that his administration played a role in the US cancer death rate hitting a record low in 2017. The American Cancer Society says that’s not true. Fact Check 

1/10/20 The House of Representatives delivers a rebuke to President Trump over his use of U.S. military power in the Middle East, approving a measure, relating to the War Powers Resolution of 1983, to restrict his authority to strike Iran without congressional approval. Source

1/11/20 China records first Virus death

Mid-January 2020 HHS employees begin drafting contingency plans for enforcing the Defense Production Act to compel private companies to produce critical supplies.

• 3/18/20 Trump invokes the Defense Protection Act but does not use it.

1/13/20  Thailand confirms COVID-19 cases

1/13/20  The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration would divert $7.2 billion of funding from the Pentagon to fund the president’s  wall along the southern border.

1/14/20 WHO Confirms there could be wider outbreak and warns “all countries to continue preparedness activities.”

• W.H.O. needs the support of its international members to accomplish anything — it has no authority over any territory, it cannot go anywhere uninvited, and it relies on member countries for its funding. All it can offer is expertise and coordination (Source) 

1/14/18 CDC to perform the screens in five high-risk cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. An agency official said it could provide “an early warning signal to trigger a change in our response strategy.” But most of the cities could not carry it out.

1/14/20 Trump Campaign Rally

1/15/20 Cardinal Health recalled 9 Million gowns made by Chinese manufacturer due to lack of sterilization. “At this time, we cannot provide sterility assurances with respect to the gowns or the packs containing the gowns because of the potential for cross-contamination‘. Source 

1/16/20 Japan confirms COVID-19 cases 

1/16/20 German researchers develop a diagnostic test for COVID-19.

1/16/20 CNN that “fears are mounting across Asia over the cross-border spread of a new coronavirus identified in China that has killed one patient and sickened dozens, as health authorities race to identify the source of the pathogen.

1/16/20 House sends impeachment articles to Senate

1/17/20The CDC implements health screenings in three U.S. airports for travelers coming from Wuhan, China. San Francisco (SFO), New York (JFK), and Los Angeles (LAX).

1/18/20- Trump Golfs

4/18/20 Alex Azar tries to speak to President Trump about the outbreak for the first time. President Trump ignores the warning. Washington Post reports.

1/18/20 A headline in the New York Times read “Deadly Mystery Virus Reported in 2 New Chinese Cities and South Korea.”

1/19/20 Trump Golfs

1/20/20 The CDC used its own kit to confirm the first case of COVID-19 in the U.S.

1/20/20 South Korea  reports  first case of novel coronavirus. South Korea quickly proceeds to mobilize vast resources for diagnostic testing, including drive-through screening centers, and quarantines.

1/20/20 NBC Coronavirus cases surge in China as virus spreads.” BEIJING — The number of people known to have been infected with the coronavirus jumped Monday to over 200 from 62, with new cases reported in China’s capital and other Asian countries

1/20/20 First USA  COVID-19 case reported in Washington 

1/2/20 Dr. Zhong (China)  delivered a startling message on national television: Local officials had covered up the seriousness of the outbreak, the contagion spread quickly between people, doctors were dying and everyone should avoid the city. NYTimes

1/22/20 “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. And we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — CNBC interview Trump made this comment on the CNBC show “Squawk Box” during an interview with Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

•  500 cases reported in China and the first had just been recorded in the United States.

1/22/20 Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) warns HHS Secretary Azar not to trust Chinese authorities and requests that the Department of Health and Human Services inform Congress if the administration discovers false or misleading information from  Chinese officials.

1/23/2020 Wuhan is placed under quarantine. Hubei province follows

1/23/20 Singapore bans all inbound flights from Wuhan, China. T

1/23/20 The WHO releases a statement about the novel coronavirus that includes transmission rates, human-to-human transmission capability, and severity of the virus.

1/23/20 Department of State announced a new regulation aimed at denying pregnant people visas to prevent them from traveling to the United States. 

1/24/20 Trump thanks Chinese President Xi for his transparency and effort in tackling the coronavirus.

1/24/20  The CDC confirms the second case detected in Illinois in the U.S. The patient recently returned from Wuhan, China,  “Currently, testing must take place at CDC, but CDC is preparing to share these test kits with domestic and international partners,” the agency said.

1/24/20– Trump tweeted, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!“

1/25/20 The new school guidelines, released by the US Department of Agriculture last week, would allow for foods like pizza, burgers and fries to be served to kids at lunch time. Certain types of pasta are to be considered a vegetable for millions of public school meals, according to new rules proposed by Trump’s administration.

1/27/20 South Korean officials inform private companies that they should start developing testing kits.

1/27/20 -Viral Tweet Goes out that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a human-made creation developed in a Chinese lab owned by all-purpose boogeyman George Soros for the purpose of causing economic disruption that would unseat Donald Trump from the U.S. presidency: Fact Check 

• Soros holds no executive position at WuXi AppTec, and a list of the company’s major shareholders shows that none owns more than 10% of the shares, and all of the largest shareholders are Chinese entities with no discernible connection to Soros himself.

1/28/20 Trump Campaign Rally

1/28/20: Alex Azar has  coronavirus press briefing and informs the public that the HHS has been monitoring the virus since December.

• Dr. Carter Mecher, a senior medical adviser at the Department of Veterans Affairs, emails dozens of his colleagues in government and at universities about the coronavirus.

1/28/20 Senator write to Social Security While the proposal intended to kick Social Security Disability claimants off of benefits has received attention, a second rule that would make the appeals process harder to navigate has flown under the radar. Administrative law judges and Democrats in Congress have been paying attention, though. Source 

1/28/20 Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), urges Secretaries Mike Pompeo, Alex Azar, and Chad Wolf to implement a targeted travel ban on China and warns the senior White House officials not to trust Chinese authorities. He writes in a letter: (See Letter)

China’s own actions demonstrate the severity of the threat. Beijing has quarantined more than 50 million people–the combined population of our entire West Coast–and cancelled school indefinitely. Just this morning, Hong Kong has slashed travel from mainland China. These are not the actions of a government in control of the outbreak. … Thanks to the deadly combination of Chinese duplicity and incompetence, the virus has now spread to most provinces in China and neighboring nations.

1/29/20  Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, warns that failing to contain a coronavirus outbreak could cost the U.S. trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death.

• He also argued for “an immediate travel ban on China.” 
• 4/8/20, Trump denied knowing anything about this in press conference

1/27 or 29/20 White House Coronavirus Task Force was established with daily meetings. 

• Joe Grogan (head of White House Domestic Policy Council) argues that the administration needs to take the virus seriously and that the President’s reelection could be at stake.
• U.S. has so far confirmed five cases of the virus, though dozens of suspected cases have been reported.
• Of the confirmed cases, two were in California, one in Illinois, one in Washington state, and one in Arizona, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Press Release 

1/29/20 Singapore begins screening for temperatures, enforces mandatory quarantines for travellers coming from Hubei, and restricts entry for all travelers who travelled through China in the past 14 days.

1/30/20 Trump Campaign Rally in Iowa

1/30/20 Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in a Fox News interview, says the virus will be good for the U.S. economy. “I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America”….”I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease.”… “The fact is, it does give business yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain… So I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America,” he went on to say.

• Secretary Azar warns President Trump that the virus could morph into a pandemic, a warning the president discounts as alarmist.

1/30/20 : “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five — and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.” — a speech in Michigan

1/30/20 , the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released block grant guidance to allow states to cap Medicaid spending – putting forward the notion that we should ration health care for the most vulnerable people in our nation.

1/30/20 WHO declared a global public health emergency

1/31/20 The Department of Health and Human Services declares a public health emergency for the U.S.

1/31/20 Trump administration announced an expansion of its Muslim ban, which will expand restrictions on additional countries including Myanmar (also known as Burma), Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.

1/31/20 Trump places travel restrictions to China effective 2/2/20;  United States to take action to restrict and suspend the entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of all aliens who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China, excluding the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States.  I have also determined that the United States should take all necessary and appropriate measures to facilitate orderly medical screening and, where appropriate, quarantine of persons allowed to enter the United States who may have been exposed to this virus. (WH) and Fact Check 

• The suspension comes after 45 other countries implement travel restrictions on China and includes exemptions that allow tens of thousands of passengers to enter the United States.

Day 32 

2/1/20 Princess Cruises confirmed that a passenger who sailed aboard the Diamond Princess from Yokohama, Japan, on Jan. 20 and disembarked in Hong Kong on Jan. 25 had tested positive for the virus.

• 2/4/20The Diamond Princess cruise ship is quarantined in Yokohama with about 3,700 people, including passengers and crew, onboard.

Early February 2020: White House officials call for more forceful response to the novel coronavirus, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin resists.

• Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, argues for restricting the flow of travelers from Italy and other nations in the European Union that were emerging as hot spots, which Fauci supports.
• Joe Grogan, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and other officials reportedly worry that there aren’t enough available tests to determine the rate of infection.

2/1/20 Trump Golfs

2/2/20 First COVID-19  is recorded in Philippines.

2/2/20  “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.” Trump made this comment on the Fox News program “Hannity.”

2/3/20  Congress sends letter sent to Robert Redfield of CDC regarding virus concerns 

2/4/20 World Health Organization said that, while the virus had not yet reached pandemic levels, it was considered to be an epidemic with multiple locations; an epidemic being more than a normal number cases of an illness.

2/5/20 Senator Burr received a briefing from intelligence officials about the coronavirus and the status of the global health emergency, including economic fallout.

2/5/20Senators urge the administration to take the virus more seriously.

2/5/20 China admits to “shortcomings” and “deficiencies” in its handling of the novel coronavirus.

2/5/20 CDC sends test kits to state health agencies. They were bad. The tests needed clean reagents, chemicals essential to providing reliable results. Some of the reagents were tainted and states had to send their samples to be tested back to the CDC.

2/5/20 Senate Votes to Acquit Trump 

2/7/20 Peter J. Brown Homeland Security advisor moved  Special Representative for Puerto Rico’s Disaster Recovery

2/7/20  WHO warned about the limited stock of PPE. That same day, the Trump administration announced it was sending 18 tons of masks, gowns and respirators to China.”The U.S., the State Department announced it had facilitated “the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies to the Chinese people, including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials” in order to help “contain and combat the novel coronavirus”: 

2/7/20 Li Wenliang dies, the Chinese whistleblower.

2/7/20 Trump fires Sondland  ( EU ambassador) . Sondland was an impeachment witness

2/7/20 Trump fires Vindman (impeachment witness) and his brother (no relationship with impeachment)  An adviser to Trump said the firings of the major impeachment witnesses was meant to send a message that siding against the President will not be tolerated.

2/8/20 US Citizen dies in Wuhan. First death of an American Citizen

2/9/20 China records 811 deaths

2/10/20  Trump“Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do — you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases — 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.” — remarks to governors 

2/10/20 Trump Campaign rally

2/11/20 WHO Calls the coronavirus disease COVID-19

2/12/20: The CDC reveals that some labs were having problems when doing verification tests to make sure the tests worked. It was a manufacturing problem with one component of the test, CDC later says.

2/12/20 Burr receives another briefing on the coronavirus about the potential impact of an epidemic and whether the U.S. is prepared.

• 2/13/20: Burr sells 33 major stock holdings worth between $628,000 to $1.7 million.
• Some stocks include stocks in hotel and tourism industries.
• Three other senators (Dianne Feinstein, James M. Inhofe, Kelly Loeffler) sell major holdings around the same time. Sen. Loeffler’s husband also purchases stocks in a major PPE provider four times in February and March, as revealed by Sen. Loeffler’s financial disclosure forms.

2/12/20 Dow Jones closes at an all time high

2/12/20 Trump Tweet “Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record.”

• Fact Check: Gallup poll conducted in early-to-mid-February — before there were any reported US deaths from the coronavirus — that found 77% of respondents had confidence in the federal government to handle a coronavirus outbreak. But that poll asked about confidence in the government’s future acts, not about approval of its actual work to date. It also did not ask about Trump in particular.
• Another Poll: 43 percent of registered voters approve, while 49 percent disapprove. There are sharp divides along political parties, similar to the president’s overall job approval rating: 87 percent of Republicans approve, 83 percent of Democrats disapprove, and 50 percent of independents disapprove.

2/12/20  COVID-19 starts to spike in South Korea

2/13/20 Secretary Azar announces that the government will establish a “surveillance” program in five cities which will then be expanded nationally

• the plan is delayed for weeks.

2/14/20 Egypt confirmed its first coronavirus case, becoming the first country in Africa to be affected by the outbreak.

• The global death toll passes 1,500, including three outside mainland China.

2/14/20 The HHS and the National Security Council produce a memo titled “U.S. Government Response to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.”

• ‘significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Widespread “stay at home” directives from public and private organizations with nearly 100% telework for some.’
• Trump later cancels the meeting with senior HHS and National Security Council officials, when officials intended to present the memo and their recommendation for enhanced mitigation measures. “

2/14/20 The first coronavirus death was recorded outside Asia. The patient was an 80-year-old Chinese tourist who died in France.

2/14/20 Trump  “There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm — historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet. But that’s around the corner.” — speaking to National Border Patrol Council members

2/15/20 Trump Golfs (Trump Golf Schedule)

2/15/20  CDC and state labs had tested just under 2,200 samples.

• South Korea had already performed over 7,900 tests.

2/16-24 /20: The WHO sends a team, including two U.S. experts, to China.

• China had reported more than 75,000 cases of the virus.

Mid-February The coronavirus begins to spread in New York from Europe, according to recent studies.

2/18/20 14 Coronavirus-infected Americans are flown back to US on plane full of healthy people. Against the advice from the CDC. They were evacuated from a cruise ship in Japan

2/19/20– Trump Campaign Rally

2/19/20 Trump assures the public against worrying about the coronavirus.

‘I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get into April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that and that type of a virus.”

2/19/20 COVID-19 outbreaks in Iran with two cases in which both died. 

2/20/20 Victoria Coates Deputy National Security Advisor Middle East and Northern Affairs. Reassigned to Energy Department after rumors that she was the author of the Anonymous op-ed.

2/20/20 Acting deputy secretary, Ken Cucinelli, took to Twitter for help figuring out how to access a map of coronavirus outbreaks.

2/20/20 Trump Campaign Rally

2/21/20 Trump Campaign Rally

2/21/20 Dr. Kadlec (HHS) reportedly convenes an urgent meeting of the White House coronavirus task force in an effort to determine not if but when the country would need to be in lock down to prevent the spread of the virus.

2/21/20 COVID-19 outbreaks in Italy

2/21/20-  Trump fires Former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and his deputy, Andrew Hallman. According to The New York Times, Grenell told Hallman, who has worked for national intelligence and the CIA for three decades, that his service was no longer needed. Trump was frustrated with Maguire and alleged his disloyalty after House lawmakers were briefed last week on Russian interference in the 2020 election to help reelect Trump. Source 

2/22/20– President Donald Trump quietly issued a memo granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department’s 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions said were as part of the administration’s far-reaching assault on organized labor.  The memo argues that a unionized Defense Department workforce could pose a threat to “national security” and that, if necessary, collective bargaining rights at the department should be scrapped in the interest of “protecting the American people.” (Source) 

2/23/20: Trump “We have it very much under control in this country.” — speaking to reporters

2/23/20 Peter Navarro writes second memo to White House staff with revised predictions. As many as 100 million Americans could be infected with the virus, Navarro wrote, and it could end up killing as many as 2 million U.S. citizens.

• 4/7/20 Trump: I heard he wrote some memos talking about pandemic,” Trump said when asked when he first learned of Navarro’s warnings. “I didn’t see them. I didn’t look for them, either.”

2/24/20 : “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” — on Twitter

2/24/20 Dr. Kadlec (HHS) gives President Trump a plan titled “Four Steps to Mitigation.”

2/24/20 White House asked Congress for $1.25 billion to help fund the government’s response to COVID-19 and stocks plummeted. 

2/25/20 Trump “You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it, and the people that have it are — in all cases, I have not heard anything other.” — press conference in New Delhi, India

2/25/20 A CDC director says that a severely disruptive outbreak is inevitable. As we’ve seen from recent countries with community spread, when it has hit those countries, it has moved quite rapidly. We want to make sure the American public is prepared,” Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters.

China reports 78,064 cases of coronavirus and 2,715 deaths.

2/25/20 Larry Kudlow, National Economic Council Director We have contained this. ‘I won’t say airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.” “I don’t think it’s going to be an economic tragedy at all,” he adds. He also says he sees no problems with supply and availability of medical equipment. In response to Nancy Messonnier

2/25/20 – Trump “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

2/25/20 Trump states Not Fair in a Tweet.

2/25/20 Trump  “If you go back six months or three months ago, nobody would have ever predicted. But let’s see, I think it’s going to be under control. And I think I can speak for our country, for — our country is under control.” — a business roundtable in New Delhi, India

• ‘China is working very, very hard. I have spoken to President Xi, and they’re working very hard. And if you know anything about him, I think he’ll be in pretty good shape. They’re — they’ve had a rough patch, and I think right now they have it — it looks like they’re getting it under control more and more. They’re getting it more and more under control.

2/25/20  Trump Tweet “CDC & my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

2/25/20: Only 12 state or local labs out of more than 100 nationwide could do their own testing — in addition to the CDC processing tests itself. “Commercial labs will also be coming online soon with their own tests,” a CDC official tells reporters.

2/25/20-Mardi Gras Ends • There were few coronavirus cases in the United States at the time, and health officials then said there was no community spread. Source

• The earliest indication we found from a federal agency saying that large events may need to be canceled came Feb. 26, after Mardi Gras celebrations.
• It’s estimated that more than 1 million people go to New Orleans annually for the Carnival season and experts now believe the festivities fueled the outbreak.
• Trump did not suggest that large public events be canceled. In India on Feb. 25 and before leaving for India on Feb. 23, Trump said the coronavirus was very “under control” in the United States.
• Trump tweeted about the virus at least eight times from January to Feb. 25.

2/25/20 Larry Kudlow (United States National Economic Council) told CNBC “we have contained” the virus, despite CDC officials warning that the virus is likely to continue to spread.

2/25/20 So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. But we lost almost 1,000 points yesterday on the market, and that’s something. You know, things like that happen where — and you have it in your business all the time — it had nothing to do with you; it’s an outside source that nobody would have ever predicted. If you go back six months or three months ago, nobody would have ever predicted.’ (SEE Above reports, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019)

2/26/20 Trump “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.” — White House task force briefing

2/26/20 Trump “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” — press conference

2/26/20 South Korean officials started testing people in their cars

2/26/20 Trump “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.” — press conference, when asked if “U.S. schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading”  ‘I would think so, yes. I mean, I haven’t spoken specifically about that with the various doctors, but I would think so, yes.

2/26/20 California announced the first case in the U.S. with no clear source of exposure.

2/26/20 Brazil confirmed its first coronavirus case, the first in Latin America.

2/26/20 Trump  “It’s going to be very well under control. Now, it may get bigger, it may get a little bigger. It may not get bigger at all. We’ll see what happens. But regardless of what happens, we are totally prepared.” — press conference

2/26/20  press conference after Trump was asked about his proposed budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization.

• Trump: No, because we — we can get money and we can increase staff. We know all the people. We know all the good people. It’s a question I asked the doctors before. Some of the people we cut, they haven’t been used for many, many years. And if — if we ever need them, we can get them very quickly. And rather than spending the money — and I’m a business person — I don’t like having thousands of people around when you don’t need them.
• When we need them, we can get them back very quickly. For instance, we’re bringing some people in tomorrow that are already in this, you know, great government that we have, and very specifically for this. We can build up very, very quickly. And we’ve already done that. I mean, we really have built up. We have a great staff.

2/26/20  Trump removes Azar as the leader of the task force and puts Pence in charge of government’s coronavirus task force. Vice President Mike Pence is known for allowing an outbreak of HIV to rapidly spread in Indiana during his time as governor. As governor, Pence initially refused to allow clean-needle exchange programs, which experts argued were necessary to prevent further outbreaks of HIV. He also spearheaded funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, which led to the closing of the last HIV testing facility in a county at the center of the outbreak.

2/27/20 Trump blames Do Nothing Democrats. Meanwhile there are over 300 bills sitting in the Senate that McConnell refuses to put through.

2/27/20 Trump “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.”” — White House meeting with African American leaders.

2/27/20 HHS Secretary Alex Azar tells lawmakers that it’s unlikely that large numbers of Americans will need to be hospitalized.

• “The immediate risk to the public remains low, It will look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season in terms of the interventions and approaches you will see.”

2/27/20 Senator Burr informs a private luncheon that the coronavirus is “much more aggressive” than the United States has seen in recent history and is probably “more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

2/27/20 Trump calls Azar to complain that CDC Director Nancy Messonier’s warnings about the outbreak are scaring the stock markets.

2/27/20 The Australian government activated its emergency response to COVID-197, designating it a global pandemic much earlier than the World Health Organization and any other advanced economy in the Group of Seven nations.

2/27/20 Trump blames Anti-Trump Network.

2/27/20 Health secretary Alex Azar won’t promise that a coronavirus vaccine would be affordable—Azar, a former drug company executive and pharmaceutical lobbyist, told Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) during a congressional hearing on Wednesday that, although he would want to make it affordable, he won’t promise that it will be. “We can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest,” he said.

2/27/20 Trump blames China, Democrats and mis-information as he did not close borders.

2/28/20 Rush Limbaugh read from an article from The Western Journal, a website that was blacklisted by Apple News in 2019 for promoting articles Apple determined were “overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community.” The coronavirus, Mr. Limbaugh said, “appears far less deadly” than the flu, but the government and the media “keep promoting panic.”

2/28/20 Dr. Carter Mecher emails the Red Dawn email chain and warns that the United States has a narrow window to implement non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as social distancing). ‘And we are flying blind,”

2/28/20 Trump “It’s going to disappear. “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

2/28/20  Donald Trump Jr. told ‘Fox & Friends’ Democrats and that left-wing media will try to use anything that they can use to try to hurt Trump, but this is a ‘new level of sickness.’Democrats and the left-wing media are hoping for a coronavirus pandemic and it represents a “new level of sickness,“. old at this point,” for them to try to take a potential pandemic and “seemingly hope that it comes here, and kills millions of people so they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning is a new level of sickness.”

2/28/20 Iran reports 34 deaths out of 388 confirmed coronavirus cases, making it the country with the highest number of deaths from the virus outside China.

2/28/20  Six of the Corona Virus Task Force take off to attend the  Conservative Political Action Convention, a pro-Trump conservative meeting outside Washington. The list of CPAC attendees on the task force included White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, HHS secretary Alex Azar, and national security adviser Robert O’Brien. Vice President Pence, who heads the task force, told CPAC attendees that the risk of infection “remains low.”

• Also in attendance: White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  Don Trump Jr., Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, Lara Trump, and the president
• Mick Mulvaney dismissed concerns over the epidemic “The flu kills people,” he said. “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence, it’s not the same as the Ebola crisis.”
• Larry Kudlow, on a panel with Ivanka Trump, said, “This will turn out to be a low-risk proposition, not a high-risk proposition. The numbers so far are very low. We’re in good shape. It just goes to show you what a country with freedom can do even with public health. That’s what makes us different. aid Federal Reserve surveys were showing that the virus was not disrupting supply chains. The stock market, which fell 1,000 points Friday morning because of the virus, was simply an opportunity for the savvy long-term investor to find some bargains, 

2/28/20 Trump: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

2/28/20, Alex Azar (Health and Human Services Secretary)  first signaled that the administration might use the Defense Production Act for the coronavirus to expedite contracts for medical supplies, such as face masks and gloves.

2/28/20 A whistleblower from the Department of Health and Human Services is alleging that the Trump administration, without providing adequate medical training or protective equipment, sent more than a dozen federal workers to two military bases in California to help process Americans who were evacuated from Wuhan, China and quarantined for possible exposure to the coronavirus. (Source) 

2/28/20 The CDC says it had a fix for the manufacturing problem and had manufactured new tests.

2/28/20 Trump campaign rally (South Carolina),  Trump likened the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying “this is their new hoax.”  he downplayed the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu. 

• Fact Check: He did not say the Coronavirus was a Hoax.

2/29/20– CDC- said it would allow labs to create and use their own in-house tests immediately, and about a week later, private diagnostic companies began to step in with their own tests.

2/29/20 Trump announced more travel restrictions involving Iran and increased warnings about travel to Italy and South Korea.

2/29/20 Dr. Fauci Interview: Fact Check Did Dr. Fauci Say There Was ‘Nothing to Worry About’ in Regards to COVID-19?

• Fauci says that Americans do not need to change their daily practices and the current risk is low, but could change. (Today Show)

2/29/20 First COVID-19 Death on American Soil

2/29/20 Trump: “And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.” — speech at CPAC, outside of Washington, D.C.

Day 60

3/1/20 Dr. Mecher warns the Red Dawn email chain that the United States “should have pulled all the triggers for NPIs [nonpharmaceutical interventions] by now.” 

3/1/20- Pence and his office take control of all public government statements on the coronavirus, which now go through his press secretary, Katie Miller.

• Now the CDC and the National Institutes of Health can no longer share their own research, and a Pence office stamp of approval is required to broadcast independent information.

3/1/20 Trump calls media Fake News again and calls them the Enemy of the People.

3/2/20 Trump “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?” Trump asked this question during a meeting with pharmaceutical executives and public health officials. One of the health officials flatly responded: No. 

3/2/20 Trump  “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.” Trump made this comment during the same meeting mentioned above. This quote appears in a transcript of the meeting provided by the White House 

3/2/20  Federal judge rules that it was unlawful to appoint Ken Cuccinelli, (Coronavirus task force) an immigration hardliner chosen by President Donald Trump, to lead the agency responsible for processing US immigration requests.

• Cuccinelli’s appointment violated a statute that governs how most federal vacancies are filled. The judge invalidated a set of US asylum policies for the asylum seekers who are part of the case.

3/2/20 A tally of the number of people tested for the novel coronavirus disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. 

3/2/20 Rush Limbaugh told his listeners. “They think this is going to be the thing that brings down the president. That’s what this is all about,”

3/2/20 White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said. News networks are “doing everything they can to instill fear in people,” while Democrats are “trying to gain political favor by saying a lot of untruths” 

3/2/20– China announces that it will expel America Journalists, revoke press credentials for American journalists who work for the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal and whose credentials were set to expire in 2020, retaliating for state media restrictions by the Trump administration… The reduction from the current total of 160 meant that 60 Chinese nationals would have to leave the country. (Source) 

3/2/20 Campaign Rally; Charlotte, NC  “So when you lose 27,000 people a year, nobody knew that. I didn’t know that.“

• The CDC estimates that between 12,000 and 61,000 people have died in the US in each flu season between 2010-2011 and 2018-2019; its preliminary figure for 2018-2019 is 34,157 deaths.

3/3/20 COVID-19 increases in Spain leading to outbreak

3/3/20 Trump wanted to start a daily two-hour radio show during the coronavirus outbreak, but ultimately decided against the idea because he didn’t want to compete with Rush Limbaugh, according to The New York Times.

3/3/20  Kevin  McCarthy Tweets : U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of delaying a vote on a coronavirus-funding package on the House floor so that a Democratic political organization could run ads against Republican lawmakers to make the latter look bad. (Fact Check) 

• As of March 3, 2020, when McCarthy made the remark, both Republicans and Democrats were continuing to negotiate the funding package that the House passed the next day. Pelosi’s chief of staff,
• Drew Hammill-Twitter responded to McCarthy, pointing out as much. “The bipartisan negotiations on the coronavirus funding supplemental are still underway. Your staff have been participating in those talks,” Hammill wrote, calling McCarthy’s comment “a disgusting and false accusation.”
• Tuesday night that outstanding issues included price limitations for drug treatments and eventually vaccines; reimbursements to hospitals for uncompensated care; and a Medicare waiver to allow payments to certain health care providers for telehealth services, such as in-home video visits.

3/4/20 Trump “We have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers.

• But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” —White House meeting with airline CEOs

3/4/20 Trump “If we have thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work – some of them go to work, but they get better.” Trump’s comment during an interview on Fox News.

• At the time, the CDC was urging employers to have workers stay home.

3/4/20 Trump “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number.” — interview on Fox News, referring to the percentage of diagnosed COVID-19 patients worldwide who had died, as reported by the World Health Organization. (See “Trump and the Coronavirus Death Rate.”)

3/4/20 HHS clarified that the U.S. has about 1%, not 10%, of the required respirator masks that would be needed if the COVID-19 outbreak were to erupt into a pandemic.

3/4/20 Trump falsely claims that he had to end an Obama-era FDA “rule” to more quickly provide diagnostic tests to the public. Experts later told  no such formal regulation was ever implemented under President Barack Obama.

• FACT Check: Trump may have been referring to the Feb. 29 FDA announcement, allowing labs to use their own tests before getting an emergency use authorization approved by the FDA. But that announcement allowed an exception to a de facto FDA policy; there was no “rule” that needed to be overturned.

  

3/4/20 The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a highly anticipated case that could restrict access to abortions by requiring doctors who perform them to be able to admit patients at nearby hospitals.  (Source) 

Day 65

3/5/20  LabCorp says its test is available for health care providers to order. Quest Diagnostics says it will provide testing four days later.

3/5/20 Trump “I never said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” Trump’s “work” comment caused significant controversy, leading Trump to clarify his remarks on Twitter. 

3/5/20–Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, an infectious diseases specialist, penned a viral Facebook post warning about the loss of reason in the face of panic over the new coronavirus in 2020. Source

3/5/20 Fox News town hall in Scranton, Pennsylvania; ‘We got hit with the virus, really, three weeks ago, if you think about it, I guess. That’s when we first started, really, to see, you know, some possible effects.” 

3/5/20 Trump Tweets about his ratings ‘Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation.”

3/6/20 exchange with reporters after tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ‘I hear the numbers are getting much better in Italy.”

• 3/7/20 Italy had 5,883 confirmed cases and 233 deaths
• 3/9/20 there were 9,172 cases and 463 deaths in Italy

3/6/20 Doctors and hospitals start complaining they can’t get tests .

• Trump said, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.”
• There were an insufficient number of tests available, as Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged the day prior, and Americans could not get tested simply because they wanted to get tested. “You may not get a test unless a doctor or public health official prescribes a test,”
• Azar said the day after Trump’s remark — and even some of the people whose doctors wanted them to be tested were not able to obtain a test. (Azar claimed Trump was using “shorthand” for the fact that “we as regulators, or as those shipping the test, are not restricting who can get tested.”)

3/6/20– Trump signed the $8.3 Billion funding bill into law

Global Cases hit 100,000.

3/6/20 Trump announced Congressman Mark Meadows (R) as his new and 4th chief of staff. -The four-term congressman from North Carolina previously chaired the Freedom Caucus and has long been a close ally to the president. He’s also been a big proponent of Trump’s border wall in Congress.

• He replaced- ousted Mick Mulvaney, who was acting chief, and who will now become the US special envoy for Northern Ireland

3/6/20 CDC Tour; Trump talks about how smart is he is and understands it.  I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down. We’ve really been very vigilant, and we’ve done a tremendous job at keeping to down.

But who would have thought? Look, how long ago is it? Six, seven, eight weeks ago — who would have thought we would even be having the subject? We were going to hit 30,000 on the Dow like it was clockwork. Right? It was all going — it was right up, and then all of a sudden, this came out.

•  Cases of COVID-19 in the United States had jumped to over 300.

3/6/20– CDC Tour- Trump interrupts to talk about his ratings

TRUMP: “Anybody that needs a test gets a test…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

• The U.S. had conducted 1,326 tests, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project, including tests with results pending.
• The group, run by journalists, researchers, scientists and others, says it attempts to provide “the number of people being tested, not specimens submitted,” but it also notes state public health authorities, the source of the bulk of the data, are inconsistent in the way they report their information and the quality of their data varies.

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” CDC in Georgia. 

3/6/20 “I don’t need to have the numbers double b/c of 1 ship that wasn’t our fault.” Saying that he would prefer that cruise ship passengers exposed to the virus be left aboard so that they don’t add to the number of total infections in the US

• Comment was made as Trump toured the CDC facility in Georgia. At the time, the Grand Princess cruise ship was being held off the coast of San Francisco, California, and carrying passengers sickened with COVID-19.

• Mike Pence, announced that 21 people on a cruise ship being held off San Francisco had tested positive for coronavirus. He also urged older Americans to “use caution” in planning any cruise ship vacation.

3/6/20 More than a third of all Senate-confirmed civilian positions at the Department of Defense are now vacant or filled by temporary officials

• These vacancies continue to challenge the department’s ability to effectively respond to national security challenges and undermine civilian input into the decision-making process with political appointees largely absent,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.)
• Part of the challenge of filling senior positions is that the White House personnel office, which is led by a 29-year-old Trump loyalist, is now trying to exert more control over the Pentagon’s nominating process. The two offices have not yet settled on a choice to replace John Rood, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official until he was forced out in February

3/6/20 Donald Trump’s re-election campaign sues CNN for publishing an opinion piece that argued Trump did not stop Russia from helping the campaign during the presidential election. Trump’s campaign has also filed libel lawsuits against the Washington Post and the New York Times in the past few weeks. Those lawsuits, similarly, were over opinion articles about Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Source) 

3/6/20 Trump falsely claims that any American who wants a COVID-19 test can get a test.

• April 12, 2020, the CDC still warns that it may “be difficult to find a place to get tested.”

3/7/20– Trump Golfs

3/7/20 The Lincoln Project  Republicans ― on Friday hit the president with a montage of his most insulting, offensive and ridiculous statements. (Source)

3/7/20   Jeanine Pirro (Fox News) states that “all the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly doesn’t reflect reality” Changes story on March 14 to “incredibly contagious and dangerous virus”

3/7/20 Trump: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.” — speaking to reporters, when asked if he was concerned about the arrival of the coronavirus in the Washington, D.C., area 

3/8/20 Trump Golfs

3/8/20 Judge Jeanine (FOX News) Rails against Main Stream Media fear-mongering about the COVID-19 See Video here 

3/8/20 Trump: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on Coronavirus.” This comment was published on Trump’s Twitter account. 

3/8/20 Washington (CNN) Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, faced swift backlash since tweeting a photo of himself and his children at a crowded restaurant Saturday, declared a state of emergency on Sunday as the state announced its eighth case of coronavirus. The Tweets have since been deleted.

3/8/20 Italy places all 60 million residents on lockdown

• Confirmed cases surpassed 5,800 and more than 230 people died from the virus.

3/9/20 Editorial: National Review published an editorial on March 9 citing the “failure of leadership at the top” of the US government which shows “no sign of being corrected” in regard to coronavirus. “Trump so far hasn’t passed muster…. He resisted making the response to the epidemic a priority for as long as he could…downplaying the problem, and wasting precious time.”

3/9/20 Trump “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” — on Twitter. 

3/9/20 Donald Trump press conference which was provide updates on the coronavirus, was used as an opportunity to attack Democrats, praise his own intelligence, lash out at CNN and spread false and misleading information about the status of the outbreak, as a slew of new cases were confirmed aboard a cruise ship off the California coast.

• Trump criticized Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, as a “snake” and saying he disagreed with his vice-president’s complimentary remarks toward the Democrat. Inslee, who ran for president last year, is overseeing the response to the most serious outbreak in the US.

3/9/20 Iran released 70,000 prisoners  because of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, without specifying if or when those freed would need to return to jail.

3/9/20 Trump at press briefing: “You’re actually sitting too close. We should probably get rid of another 75, 80 percent of you. I’ll have just two or three that I like in this room. I think that’s a great way of doing it. We figured a new way of doing it.” (Source) 

3/9/20 Pelosi said, “I don’t know that we can be ready this week, but we can introduce this week, we can introduce it and we may be ready this week, depending on CBO (Congressional Budget Office), depending on (the House Office of the Legislative Counsel) and how quickly they can get something back to us.” Democrats were not going on vacation .

3/9/20 Trump“The Fake News media & their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the Coronavirus situation.” This comment also comes from Trump’s Twitter account.

3/9/20 – “This blindsided the world.”

3/10/20  Italy’s prime minister announced that the lockdown placed on millions in the Lombardy region will be extended to the entire country to curb the virus’ spread.

3/10/20 Lebanon and Morocco reported their first deaths from the virus.

3/10/20 Iran’s health officials reported a spike of almost 900 new cases, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to 8,042 with 291 deaths.

3/10/20 President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign announces he will hold an event in Milwaukee the same day Democrats Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden announced they were canceling events in Ohio out of concern for public health amid the coronavirus outbreak. (Source)

• Cancelled next day
• Rush Limbaugh, a close ally of Trump’s, claimed on his radio show that Democrats want Trump to stop holding rallies “not because of public safety, not because of public health” but to hurt the President.

3/10/20 Trump “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” — after meeting with Republican senators. Trump’s full comments can be seen in a transcript from the White House:

3/10/20– Russ Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, on Tuesday doubled down on proposed cuts to health services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite the coronavirus outbreak….

• It proposed cutting Health and Human Services funding by $9.5 billion, including a 15 percent cut of $1.2 billion to the CDC and a $35 million decrease to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund’s annual contribution (Source) 

3/10/20 Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan for the first time since the virus emerged in December. The visit came as people gradually returned to work in other parts of China.

3/10/20 Pence announces that over 1 million tests have been distributed and that 4 million would be distributed by the end of the week.

• 4/12/20 the United States has conducted only 2 million tests and states continue to report testing shortages.

3/10/20 Candace Owens scoffed at what she called “the mass global mental breakdown” as financial markets plunged. “People think it’s novel that 80 year olds are dying at a high rate from a flu,” she wrote, adding that when future generations study the world’s coronavirus response, “This tweet will age well.”

3/10/20:  Washington Post reports that the reserves of the N95 respirator masks were not “significantly restored” after tens of millions of the devices were distributed from the stockpile during the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009. Medical personnel wear the respirators because they can “filter out at least 95% of airborne particles,” according to the Food and Drug Administration.

• Greg Burel the ex director of the Strategic National Stockpile for more than 12 years , recently told CBS News: “We didn’t receive funds to replace those masks, protective gear and the anti-virals that we used for H1N1.”  He told Vice News that he decided to use the program’s limited funding to instead purchase vaccines, flu medications and other pharmaceuticals.

3/10/20– Hannity (FOX News) downplayed COVID-19 and said it was being used as a “political weapon” against Trump, On March 15  he then applauded the president and told viewers “his virus is serious” while urging them to “prepare accordingly.”

3/10/20 Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) blocked an attempt by Senate Democrats to quickly pass legislation on Wednesday that would require employers to provide paid sick leave.

• The issue of paid sick leave has jumped into the spotlight amid growing concerns about a coronavirus outbreak within the United States. Individuals exposed to the virus are being recommended to quarantine for at least two weeks. Source

3/10/20  Trump responded to the worsening outbreak of the novel coronavirus by taking to morning to lash out at the Federal Reserve, criticize former President Obama, and call for border walls. (VOX)

• Since February 28, new cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the US with no link to travel, which means the disease has been spreading inside the country.

3/10/20  “Yet another attempt to impeach the president”, the Fox Business host Trish Regan said on Monday night – even as, on Fox News, so-called Trump-whisperer Tucker Carlson seemed to appeal directly to the president to “tell the truth” about the gathering crisis 

• “This is yet another attempt to impeach the president and sadly it seems they care very little for any of the destruction they are leaving in their wake. Losses in the stock market, all of this, unfortunately are just part of the political casualties for them.”

3/11/20 : States and cities start shutting down despite the Do Nothing Democrats  (Source) 

3/11/20 WHO declares COVID-19 a Pandemic

3/11/20 The NBA suspended all basketball games after a player for the Utah Jazz preliminarily tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. They all get tested 

• How the Utah Jazz got 58 coronavirus tests when US testing is sluggish

3/11/20 Actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, test positive for the coronavirus. They announced on Instagram that they are being isolated and observed in Australia, 

3/11/20 Turkey, Ivory Coast, Honduras, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Panama and Mongolia confirmed their first cases. In Qatar, infections jumped drastically from 24 to 262 in a single day.

3/11/20 Trump places travel restrictions from only 26 European Countries . Excludes UK and Ireland where he has golf courses . (Amended a few days later) Confusion abounds

• He said that goods and cargo would be blocked from Europe (it won’t be), he said it would be all of Europe (it isn’t) and he said all travel — but it seems American citizens and most family members will be excepted.
•  Trump decided not to support calls for social distancing, school closures, and other measures in response to views of his business friends and others, the New York Times reports.

3/11/20 The White House orders health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, The unusual step restricts information about the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions from those without security clearance. Reuters reports:

3/11/20– In a brief address, Trump continued to signal that the pandemic is mainly a threat outside American borders, without fully acknowledging that the coronavirus is spreading within the US.

3/11/20 Trump said that the US is doing better than Europe. “The EU failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots,” he said. “As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”

3/11/20 Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is pushing for Emergency Designation. Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump tapped to lead the administration’s coronavirus response, is wary it could trigger an economic tailspin, they added.

• There’s no deadline for a decision, but one of the people familiar with the talks said Trump’s aides will not give the president a final verdict until Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, talks to relevant parties and presents his findings to the president. (Source) 

3/11/20 Florida requested a cache of emergency supplies from the federal government to protect its medical workers against the novel coronavirus.Three days later, the state got everything it wanted. Here is why 

Day 72

3/12/20  President Donald Trump incorrectly states in his address to the nation that the health insurance industry has agreed to waive patient co-payments for treatment of COVID-19. The industry has not made such a commitment. Instead, insurers agreed to cover the full cost of diagnostic tests to see whether people have the disease. That step does not shield insured people from potentially high medical bills as a result of getting sick from the… Read at AP News

3/12/20 Trump Blames Biden

• Fact Check: With the swine flu, however, at least two polls showed higher approval of the Obama administration (the polls didn’t ask about Biden). A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in October 2009 found 69% of adults were confident in the federal government’s ability to respond to an outbreak. A CNN poll released in early November 2009 found 57% approved of Obama’s response. (

 3/12/20 A professor of internal medicine writes in the Red Dawn email chain that senior officials are throwing “15 years of institutional learning out the window and are making decisions based on intuition.”

3/12/20 Campaign Rally: Trump said, “And we had four or five of them that we were thinking about. We have a big one in Tampa, all sold out. We have over 100,000 requests for tickets,

• Fact Check There was no “sold out” Trump rally in Tampa, Florida. While Trump’s campaign was in the process of planning a Tampa rally, the event had not been publicly announced and no tickets had been publicly offered, so it simply does not make sense that the event was “sold out” or that there had been “over 100,000 requests for tickets. (Source)

3/12/20 MLB announced that it will suspend spring training and delay the start of the regular baseball season by at least two weeks.

3/12/20 Dennis Prager asked in an online “fireside chat. Yes it’s deadly, they acknowledged, but so are a lot of other things. “How many people have died this year in the United States from snake bites?”

3/12/20 The NHL announced that it will pause its hockey season. The league’s commissioner did not set an end date for the suspension.

3/12/20 The NCAA canceled both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments, known as March Madness, after most conferences suspended their postseason tournaments.

3/12/20 Scott Gottlieb Md, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under the Trump administration, U.S. “probably lost chance to have an outcome like South Korea,” and wrote of the importance of “aggressive screening to get people diagnosed.” The U.S., Gottlieb said, was “far behind current caseloads” with too many people not being able to get tested. “So we can’t identify clusters and isolate disease.”

3/12/20: In a congressional hearing, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz asks who was in charge of “making sure … as many people as possible across this country have access to getting tested as soon as possible.”

• Fauci answers: “The system — the system does not — is not really geared to what we need right now, what you are asking for. That is a failing. … The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes, but we are not.”

3/12/20 A day after nearly every major sporting event in the United States had been suspended or canceled because of the coronavirus, it became a question of which sports were on, not which were off.

3/12/20 Trump exchange with Reporters who questioned whether people coming back from Europe were being tested. “Sure. But we have them very heavily tested. If an American is coming back or anybody is coming back, we’re testing. We have a tremendous testing set up where people coming in have to be tested.”

• Fact Check: Travelers were rerouted to airports and put through an inspection known as enhanced screening, which cannot prove whether someone has the virus. They awaited hours side by side.

  

Day 73 

3/13/20  Trump blames Obama for coronavirus testing issues, says ‘changes have been made’ FactCheck

3/13/20 Trump declares a national health emergency. The administration holds a coronavirus task force briefing in which Trump announces a “new partnership” with the private sector. “Ten days ago, I brought together the CEOs of commercial labs at the White House and directed them to immediately begin working on a solution to dramatically increase the availability of tests,” White House 

3/13/20 March 13 press conference, the president was asked “what responsibility do you take” for the “disband[ing]” of the White House pandemic office, and he responded that he “didn’t know anything about it.” I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said.

“And when you say ‘me,’ I didn’t do it,” the president said. “I could ask perhaps — my administration — but I could perhaps ask Tony about that because I don’t know anything about it.

Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”

• In a 2012 tweet complaining about Barack Obama — Trump wrote, “He can never take responsibility.”
• 2013 tweet, “Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” Trump liked this so much, he ended up publishing the same phrase four times over the course of a couple of years.
• On the extended government shutdown he was solely responsible for, Trump told reporters, “The buck stops with everybody.”

3/13/20 Katie Porter (D-CA) confronts CDC Director Robert Redfield at a congressional hearing: Would he commit to using an obscure federal statute to make coronavirus testing free for every American?

3/13/20 Italy’s death toll topped 1,000 

• Confirmed cases in the country grew to more than 15,000.

3/13/20 Fox News: In a memo to staff, Fox News executives Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace warned employees of COVID-19’s dangers and announced an internal policy “prohibiting all non-essential business travel since last Monday,” advising staff to work from home, and reducing in-studio guest bookings.   The network’s hosts are sending viewers the opposite message: (Source) 

• Ainsley Earhardt  Friday’s broadcast of Fox & Friends, co-host  said that sparsely booked flights and near-empty airports mean “It’s actually the safest time to fly.” “Everyone that I know that’s flying right now, terminals are pretty much dead. Ghost towns.”
• March 13, 2020 Primetime host Laura Ingraham, tweeted that it was a “great time to fly if not in at-risk population,” essentially cutting an ad for the airline as she praised the cleanliness of the plane (United) and the “wonderful flight attendants.” Great time to fly if not in at-risk population! This is ⁦@united⁩ to ORD—new plane, wonderful flight attendants, passengers wiping down everything. (Some of us always did this when traveling!) #USA pic.twitter.com/7ev5leV7Bz
• Fox News contributor David Webb distracted during a segment on the coronavirus response, boasting on-air that he was busy “booking a flight.” After apologizing and again noting he’d just scheduled a flight, Webb loudly coughed

3/13/20 The World Health Organization said Europe “has now become the epicenter” of the pandemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined, beyond China.

3/13/20 States across the U.S., including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maryland, announced plans to close schools over the coronavirus concerns.

3/13/20  57 House Democrats wrote a letter urging the president to “use the powers afforded by the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. §§4501 et seq.) to begin the mass production of supplies needed to address the ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.”

3/13/20  Coronavirus press conference; “I want to thank the people at Google and Google Communications because, as you know, they substantiated what I said on Friday. The head of Google, who’s a great gentleman, said — called us and he apologized. I don’t know where the press got their fake news, but they got it someplace…And how that got out — and I’m sure you’ll apologize. But it would be great if we could really give the news correctly. It would be so, so wonderful.” 

• “The Fake and Corrupt News never called Google. They said this was not true. Even in times such as these, they are not truthful. Watch for their apology, it won’t happen. More importantly, thank you to Google!” — March 15 tweet
• Google declined to comment on the substance of any call between CEO Sundar Pichai and the Trump team, but it’s not true that the press did not call Google or that the press reported “fake news” about Trump’s announcement that Google was helping to develop a coronavirus website, to be completed “very quickly,” that would “determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.” Journalists contacted Google and accurately reported the company’s initial response, which made clear that Trump had exaggerated.
• 24 hours later: Google issued a second statement announcing that it would itself be “partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk and testing information.”

3/13/20 Donald Trump Jr in a Tweet via Breibart (ALT-Right media) Fact Check: Democrats impeached Trump in December before China notified the USA.

3/13/20 Fauci said The CDC designed a good system “If you want to get the kind of blanket testing and availability that anybody can get it or you could even do surveillance to find out what the penetrance is, you have to embrace the private sector.”

• CDC simply isn’t set up to be a commercial test lab, let alone the only test lab for the country in a pandemic like this. 

3/13/20   New York Times reported that officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and epidemic experts from around the world had gathered on a conference call the previous month to explore worst-case scenarios for the coronavirus’ toll. The CDC modeled four scenarios and estimated that 200,000 to 1.7 million U.S. residents could die.

3/14/20 Spain recorded nearly 2,000 new cases.

• More than 3,800 total confirmed cases and at least 84 deaths, the country enacted a partial lockdown restricting people from leaving their homes unless to go to work, the pharmacy or a hospital.

3/14/20   Federal judge has blocked a Trump administration rule from going into effect next month that was expected to cut food stamps for nearly 700,000 people.

3/14/20 Trump in a Hannity interview: “If you go back and look at the swine flu and what happened with the swine flu, you’ll see how many people died and how actually nothing was done for such a long period of time, as people were dying all over the place.” –

• 3/13/20 And, interestingly, if you go back — please — if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people. And they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late.”
• Fact Check On April 26, 2009, less than two weeks after the first US cases of H1N1 were confirmed, the Obama administration declared a public health emergency. Two days later, the Obama administration made an initial $1.5 billion funding request to Congress. (Congress ultimately allocated $7.7 billion). That same day, April 28, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention test was cleared for use. The CDC began shipping tests across the US and around the world on May 1. Between April 23 and May 31, the CDC says its influenza laboratory analyzed about 5,000 samples. In October, Obama declared a national emergency to allow hospitals more flexibility for a possible flood of H1N1 patients.

Day 75

3/15/20 Amazon Solicits Donations to Help Pay Worker Sick Leave Pay (Fact Check)

3/15/20 Trump“This is a very contagious — this is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” — White House task force briefing

3/15/20 Iran reports jump of 1,365 new cases in the past 24 hours

• Country’s total number of confirmed cases to 12,729, while the death toll rose to 611.

3/15/20 Trump Tweets No Interest on Student Loans and Blames Fake News.

• Fact Check: Trump was waiving interest on all student loans held by federal government agencies. Monthly payments aren’t going to go down at all. Instead, the entire payment will go toward paying down the principal amount on the loan. This was covered by all media.

3/15/20 The number of new cases imported into mainland China from overseas surpassed the number of locally transmitted new infections for the first time, according to the country’s National Health Commission.

3/15/20 The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. surpassed 3,000, with New York, California and Washington recording the most confirmed cases.

• The national death toll rose to 61.

3/15/20 Twenty-nine more states, including New York, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Hawaii, announced school closures.

3/15/20 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases guidelines recommending “that for the next 8 weeks, organizers (whether groups or individuals) cancel or postpone in-person events that consist of 50 people or more throughout the United States.”

Day 76 

3/16/20 Wall Street plunged again, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank by 3,000 points and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were down by around 12 percent by the closing bell.

3/16/20 Germany closes its borders with France, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Denmark to curb the virus’ spread. The border controls only allow through goods and people who work in neighboring nations and thus commute across state lines.

3/16/20 The President announces Social Distancing Guidelines to be in place for two-weeks.

• Later extended to end of April

3/16/20 Italy’s confirmed cases rise to nearly 28,000, an increase of more than 3,000 from the day before.

• The death toll hit 2,158.
• The government said it plans to spend 25 billion euros ($28 billion) to tackle the epidemic, while Italian officials said they expect more than 90,000 people will become infected by the end of April.

3/16/20 Canada announced plans to close the border to non-citizens, as the country’s number of confirmed cases rose to 339 with one death.

• The border restrictions include some exceptions, including for U.S. citizens.

3/16/20 San Francisco imposed strict prohibitions on residents leaving their homes “except for essential needs,” becoming the first city in the U.S. to introduce such extreme measures in response to the pandemic.

3/16/20 Trump ‘my administration is recommending that all Americans, including the young and healthy, work to engage in schooling from home when possible.  Avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people.  Avoid discretionary travel.  And avoid eating and drinking at bars, restaurants, and public food courts. (White House Press)

3/16/20 U.S. researchers give the first vaccine shot to the first person in a test of an experimental coronavirus vaccine. Even if the trials go well, health officials warned that a vaccine would not be widely available for at least 12 to 18 months.

3/16/20 France imposed stringent restrictions on people’s movement for two weeks. President Emmanuel Macron saying people should only leave their homes for essential activities. The order came after the country already shut down restaurants, bars, ski resorts and closed schools.

3/16/20 Roche announces that it will have completed shipping the first 400,000 of its high-volume tests to hospitals and reference labs by the end of the week.

3/16/20 : A total of 41,814 tests had been conducted in the U.S., according to The COVID Tracking Project.

3/16/20 Trump  “When I’m talking about control, I’m saying we are doing a very good job within the confines of what we’re dealing with. We’re doing a very good job. … If you’re talking about the virus, no, that’s not under control for any place in the world. … I was talking about what we’re doing is under control.” — White House task force press briefing

3/16/20 Imperial College London report: if business as usual, didn’t do anything to stop it or impede it, could have been 2.2 million people could have died.” epidemiology professor Neil Ferguson, told the New York Times 

• British researchers had shared their projections with a White House task force a week before and had sent an early copy of the report to the White House.

3/16/20 Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it is postponing oral arguments set for later this month — including President Donald Trump‘s tax case — because of the coronavirus outbreak.

3/16/20 -Birx  referenced the British report at a coronavirus task force press briefing 

Day 77 

3/17/20 People are hoarding Toilet Paper 

3/17/20 Maryland’s governor postponed the state’s primary election, a day after Ohio’s primary was called also off.

• Florida and Illinois and Arizona proceeded with their primaries.

3/17/20- Trump calls WHO TEST BAD.

• Fact Check found that WHO never offered kits to the United States, and when a reporter asked President Donald Trump if that was true, he confirmed, and took it a step further. “No. 1, nothing was offered,” Trump said March 17. “No. 2, it was a bad test.” Source 

3/ 17/20 Trump  “I’ve always known this is a — this is a real — this is a pandemic. I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” — White House task force press briefing

3/17/20 A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.

3/17/20 Israel Netanyahu announced that the country’ secretive Shin Bet internal security service would begin deploying its sophisticated counter-terrorism technology to help curb the spread of COVID-19 

3/17/20 People who are sick or have been in contact with sick people are struggling to get tested. The number of tests that could be run per day in the United States was limited to around 7,000. Labs are struggling to get the supplies they need to meet the demand. (Source)

• A relatively straightforward type of test called a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, that’s been around for decades. To run it, a doctor swabs a patient’s nose or throat and sends the sample to a lab. The lab then looks for tiny snippets of the virus’s genetic material. PCR analysis is complicated but reliable.

3/17/20The European Union announced a 30-day ban on most non-essential incoming travel.

3/17/20 West Virginia, the last state in the U.S. without a confirmed coronavirus case, recorded its first.

COVID cases across the country rose to more than 5,800. The death toll surpassed 100.

3/18/20  Canada and the U.S. agreed to close its borders to all “non-essential traffic.”

3/18/20 FOX News blames Millennials

3/18/20 Belgium announced plans to lock down the country, becoming the fourth nation in Europe to enact a nationwide quarantine, after Italy, France and Spain.

3/18/20 Trump continues to call it a Chinese Virus seemingly to shift blame to China, despite being asked not to.

3/18/20 Trading halted on Wall Street for the fourth time in two weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a loss of just over 1,300 points and the S&P fell by 5 percent.

3/18/20 WHO announced an international trial to gather data about which treatments are most effective for the coronavirus.

• Participants in the so-called solidarity trial include Argentina, Canada, France, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand.

3/18/20 The Trump administration suspended refugee admissions until April 6 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

3/18/20 Italy reports worst day after deaths rose by 475, the biggest one-day jump.

• Italy records more than 35,713 confirmed cases and 2,978 deaths, as the country tightened restrictions on residents leaving their home.

3/18/20 President Trump signed a coronavirus aid bill into law. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act would provide free coronavirus testing and ensure paid emergency leave for those infected or caring for a family member with the illness, while also providing additional Medicaid funding, food assistance and unemployment benefits.

3/18/20  Trump invokes the Defense Production Act “just in case we need it.” But does not implement the act to force production of certain goods. Trump tweeted, “I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat the Chinese Virus should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future. Hopefully there will be no need.”

3/18/20  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison declares a “human biosecurity emergency”

3/18/20 Chile and Guatemala shut down their borders hoping strict measures would curb the spread of the virus.

3/18/20 -Trump “It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.”

3/18/20 President Trump defends his increasingly frequent practice of calling the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus,” ignoring a growing chorus of criticism that it is racist and anti-Chinese…..

• Asian-Americans have reported incidents of racial slurs and physical abuse because of the erroneous perception that China is the cause of the virus.

3/18/20 Electric Scooters pull from some markets  Lime temporarily suspends service in California and Washington, as well as Italy, France, and Spain, in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The announcement came after San Francisco and its surrounding counties instituted a “shelter in place” order intended to curb the spread of the disease.

3/18/20 Pandemic “will last 18 months or longer,” leaked US gov’t report warns he US government is reportedly preparing for the coronavirus pandemic to last 18 months or longer and result in “significant shortages for government, private sector, and individual US consumers.”

3/18/20 Trump Fires Russell Travers- The acting director at the National Counterterrorism Center and his acting deputy.

• Officials worry could be a purge of the organization that’s intended to protect the U.S. from terror attacks,

3/18/20 : Jared Kushner’s family and COVID 19 testing:  Oscar Health, the health insurance company co-founded by Jared Kushner’s younger brother,announced Friday it has launched a testing center locator for COVID-19. It shows where more than 100 centers are in the United States. The company is also offering a risk assessment survey and means to talk to a doctor online.

3/18/20 Fox News Changes direction of blaming Democrats for using the virus to attack Trump to warning viewers of the dangers. Source 

3/19/20 The CDC issues updated guidelines instructing medical professionals how to use homemade masks “as a last resort” if PPE is not available. updated CDC guidance

3/19/20 Trump is seen crossing out COVID in speeches and writing China.

3/19/20  Trump said: “We’re providing sick leave and family medical leave to those affected by the virus and more help is on the way as we speak.” This was not the only time the Trump administration has cited the paid leave without mentioning that many aren’t eligible for it.  Source 

• The legislation providing the leave excludes larger companies employing nearly half of the nation’s workforce.
• Under a coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress and signed by Trump on March 18, workers are to receive paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave. But companies with 500 or more employees are not covered. In addition, the labor secretary can exempt businesses with fewer than 50 employees and health care providers.  The legislation provides workers with two weeks of paid leave if they are sick or quarantined or taking care of sick relatives. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to those taking care of children whose schools are closed or whose child care facilities are unavailable. The bill also provides free coronavirus testing.
• Most larger companies offer their employees paid sick leave, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, but many provide fewer than the 14 days necessary for a coronavirus quarantine. The average number of paid sick days for private companies with 500 workers or more was eight after one year on the job and 10 after 20 years, based on March 2018 data.
• According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 48% of American workers are employed by companies with 500 or more employees.

3/19/20 President Donald Trump on Thursday put the onus on governors to obtain the critical equipment their states need to fight the coronavirus pandemic, telling reporters that the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” for the potentially life-saving supplies.

3/19/20 Vice President Mike Pence said, “Last night, as you heard, the president signed the Family First Coronavirus Response Act, which provides free coronavirus testing, paid sick leave, family leave for caregivers, and food assistance for the needy, among a broad range of benefits.” (See Act) 

3/19/20 China reported no new domestic cases for the first time since the start of the epidemic.

• There were 34 new confirmed cases, but they were registered as “newly diagnosed imported cases.”

3/19/20 Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart,(R-FL) and Rep. Ben McAdams (D-UT)  tested positive for coronavirus

3/19/20 The European Central Bank announced a 750 billion euro, or $810 billion, plan to help the economy in the “euro area” — the monetary union of 19 of the 27 European Union member states.

3/19/20 Australia and New Zealand announced plans to close their borders to all foreigners.

3/19/20 Spain continues as  the second worst affected country in Europe.

• Death toll soar by 209 over a 24-hour period
• Total number of deaths to 767
• Total confirmed cases to 17,147.

3/19/20 Italy overtook China as the country with the most coronavirus-related deaths,

• Registering 3,405 fatalities.
• China’s total number of deaths stood at 3,242.

3/19/20 Connecticut delayed its presidential primary election to June.

3/19/20 The Cannes Film Festival, set to be held in May, was postponed until an as-yet-decided time in late June or early July.

3/19/20 The U.S. State Department raised the global travel advisory to Level 4: Do Not Travel, warning Americans against traveling internationally and for those abroad to consider returning immediately.

3/19/20 California becomes first state to  issued a statewide stay-at-home order asking residents to only leave the house if necessary. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) 

3/19/20 China exonerated Dr. Li Wenliang, the doctor who was reprimanded for warning about the coronavirus outbreak and later died of the disease.

3/19/20 China reports no new local infections

3/20/20 China reported no new domestic cases for the second day in a row.

• There were 39 new confirmed cases, but they were registered as “newly diagnosed imported cases.”

3/20/20 Death toll in Spain surpassed 1,000

• Total number of confirmed cases in the country inched near 20,000.

3/20/20 The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense airlift 500,000 swab and sample kits for COVID-19 tests from a private company located in Italy.

3/20/20 Indiana postponed its presidential primary to June 2.

3/20/20 States are losing out on crucial equipment orders even though President Donald Trump directed them to get their own supplies, rather than relying on help from the federal government. (Source) and Source

• Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker told Trump during a conference call on Thursday that the federal government had outbid his state on three major orders of medical equipment
• Federal Emergency Management Agency is not publicly reporting the acquisitions, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, nor has the administration detailed how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.
• Officials and staff at the hospitals told the newspaper they never received guidance on why the materials were taken, where they went, or when they can expect replacement orders.

3/20/20 The U.S. announced plans to close the border with Mexico to all “nonessential travel.” Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said all immigrants who lack proper entry documentation will be turned away.

3/20/20 Death toll in Italy surpassed 4,000, after 627 more deaths were announced from the previous day.

• 2nd week of quarantine 

3/20/20 Cases in California exceeded 1,000, more than doubling from only three days ago. One day after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide “stay-at-home” order for the state’s 40 million residents.

3/20/20 The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank by 916 points and the S&P 500 closed the day down 4.3 percent, marking its worst weekly performance since the 2008 financial crisis.

3/20/20 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said New York City is “now the epicenter of this crisis” in the U.S.,

• 5,151 coronavirus cases and 29 deaths.

3/20/20 Distressed by the rise in xenophobia and racism during the coronavirus pandemic, a coalition of Asian American groups based in California have created a reporting webpage for victims of virus-related hate crimes. (MSN)

3/20/20 Trump pushes the use of two malaria drugs — one in combination with an antibiotic — to treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. But there is  limited evidence to suggest the drugs are effective against the new virus. Fact Check 

Mid March

3/21/20 The FDA announces it has given emergency use authorization to a 45-minute test developed by Cepheid for point-of-care use in hospitals to help manage patients and health care workers. Cepheid plans to start shipping tests by the end of March.

3/21/20 China reported no new domestic cases in Wuhan for a third consecutive day.

• There were 41 new cases detected over the previous 24 hours, all among people traveling from overseas.
• Some businesses were reopened in Wuhan, but Hubei’s provincial borders remained closed to the rest of the country.

3/21/20 Sri Lanka imposed a countrywide curfew over the weekend, as other South Asian countries accelerated efforts to stop the virus’ spread.

3/21/20 China administered its first clinical trials of coronavirus vaccines to volunteers, according to local media reports

3/21/20 Jordan ordered a nationwide curfew, limiting the mobility of its 10 million citizens and closing all shops indefinitely.

3/21/20 Coronavirus cases in New York State, the hardest-hit in the U.S., surpassed 10,000.

3/21/20 Coronavirus cases in Switzerland jumped 25 percent in just 24 hours.

• Confirmed cases rose to 6,113 with at least 56 deaths.

3/21/20 Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey issued a stay-at-home order for nearly all of the state’s 9 million residents.

3/21/20– President Donald Trump prematurely declared that automakers, including Ford and General Motors, were manufacturing much needed ventilators “right now.”  nearly a week after the president’s claim that General Motors and Ventec Life Systems announced that the car company would begin retooling its manufacturing facility in Kokomo, Indiana, to make “critical care ventilators” that could be ready to “ship as soon as next month.”

3/21/20 Italy’s death toll soared overnight, with 793 new fatalities in the past 24 hours.

• Total number of confirmed cases shot up to 53,578 with 4,825 deaths.
• The governor of Italy’s Lombardy region, the country’s hardest-hit region, imposed even more stringent restrictions on residents, including temperature checks at supermarkets and pharmacies.

3/22/20 Trump Tweet blames Media and Governors for not doing their jobs

3/22/20 Singapore announced plans to ban all short-term visitors to the city-state, after reporting its first coronavirus-related death the previous day and 432 total confirmed cases.

3/22/20 Authorities in Colombia announced that 23 prisoners died and another 83 were injured in a riot and attempted escape over coronavirus fears.

3/22/20 Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., became the first known senator to test positive for coronavirus.

3/22/20 Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) issued a new stay-at-home order for all non-essential workers.

3/22/20 Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that the state would be under a stay-at-home order.

3/22/20  Trump announced that he would activate the federal National Guard to assist Washington, California and New York, three of the states hit hardest by the pandemic.

3/22/20 Trump tweets again about Fake News and send out Victim message.

3/22/20  Trump– We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business. Call a person over in Venezuela; ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out. Not too well. The concept of nationalizing our business is not a good concept.

•  Fact Check: Compelling a company to produce supplies is not the same as “nationalizing” the business. Under the act, private businesses would be paid for their production and would remain private companies, not government entities.

3/22/20 Trump was asked whether the coronavirus economic stimulus bill would include financial assistance for countries to fight global pandemics. Trump said “no,” but noted that “we give billions and billions and billions of dollars to other countries” to fight diseases. He added: “I don’t think I’ve ever said, ‘No.’ I can’t.”

• Trump Budget Cuts
• $3.76 billion for global HIV/AIDS programs, which is $1.59 billion less than what Congress approved in fiscal 2020 and would be the lowest amount of funding since 2007.
• $283.2 million for tuberculosis programs, $37.6 million less than what Congress appropriated for fiscal year 2020, and $905
• $2 million for malaria programs, which would be a reduction of $93.9 million from the funding for the current fiscal cycle.
• $902 million — from the $1.56 billion appropriated in FY 2020 to $658 million proposed in the president’s FY 2021 budget.Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a publicly and privately funded international organization
• $75 million, down more than $27 million from the enacted amount of $102.5 million for 2020 for tropical disease. The World Health Organization says NTDs “are a diverse group of communicable diseases that prevail in tropical and subtropical conditions in 149 countries and affect more than one billion people, costing developing economies billions of dollars every year.”
• $119 million less in 2021 for “other” services, which “includes funding for WHO and PAHO [Pan American Health Organization]; global parasitic diseases at CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]; the Fogarty International Center at NIH [National Institutes of Health]; as well as the Emergency Reserve Fund, which was created in the FY17 Omnibus bill to respond to contagious infectious disease outbreaks, and would be made available if there is an ‘emerging health threat that poses severe threats to human health.’”

3/22/20 Trump blames China (again) I wish — again, our relationship with China is a very good relationship. I wish they told us three months sooner that this was a problem. We didn’t know about it. They knew about it and they should have told us. We could have saved a lot of lives throughout the world. If you look at what’s happening in Italy and Spain and a lot of other countries, we could have saved a lot of lives throughout the world.

• FACT Check: According to the World Health Organization, symptoms from the first cluster of confirmed cases emerged between Dec. 8 and Jan. 2. A study on the novel coronavirus published in The Lancet reported, “The symptom onset date of the first patient identified was Dec 1, 2019.” Trump was informed on Jan. 1, 2020. 

3/22/20   Ben Smith of New York Times:  It was a Democratic- and media-led plot against President Donald J. Trump,”

3/22/20 A vote to advance a massive coronavirus stimulus bill failed in the Senate. Democrats said they were dissatisfied with worker protections in the Republican-written bill.

3/22/20  Global cases of COVID-19 surpass 300,000.

Three months to reach the first 100,000 confirmed cases, 12 days to reach 200,000 and three days to reach 300,000.

3/22/20 Canada announced that it will not send athletes to the Olympics this year if the games are not delayed because of the pandemic. Australia similarly announced plans to pull out of the games the next day.

3/23/20 Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick  on FOX News: No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?“‘ … “And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

‘Those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country, don’t do that, don’t ruin this great America.”’

3/23/20:  Trump “People get tremendous anxiety and depression, and you have suicides over things like this when you have terrible economies. You have death. Probably and — I mean, definitely — would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.” — White House task force briefing

3/23/20 – Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93

3/23/20 Trump suggests hydroxychloroquine was behind other nations’ low COVID-19 counts in a March 23 coronavirus press briefing. “And countries with malaria have had a interesting thing happen,” he said. “They take this particular drug — it’s a very powerful drug — and there is very little semblance of the virus in those countries. And there are those that say because this drug is very prevalent because of the malaria.” (Fact Check)

• 4/4/20 He brings up the idea again press briefing after falsely claiming that “people with lupus,”  who also take hydroxychloroquine to treat symptoms of their disease, “aren’t catching this horrible virus.”

3/23/20 New York confirms 21,000 cases making it the biggest center

3/23/20 Trump signs a new executive order “to prohibit the hoarding of needed resources,” citing the authority given to him under the Defense Production Act. 

3/23/20 Reuters reported: “As part of the effort to boost ventilator output from Ventec, GM has arranged for the supply of 95% of the parts needed to build the ventilator and is seeking to source the remaining 37 necessary parts, according to an email to suppliers from Shilpan Amin, GM’s vice president of global purchasing.”

•  “First parts need to be delivered by suppliers to GM by April 6, the sources said. Supplier production could begin ‘within the next 2-3 weeks,’ Amin said in his email. It was not clear when GM might begin production.”

3/23/20– Bailout Talks “We Democrats are trying to get things done, not making partisan speech after partisan speech,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, on Monday on the Senate floor…..Mr. Schumer and Mr. Mnuchin to iron out remaining differences.

• Mr. McConnell and Ms. Pelosi were kept closely apprised of the talks….Democrats raised concerns that the plan would not require sufficient transparency or enough guardrails around the funds to make sure companies do not use them to enrich themselves or take government money and lay off workers.
• They also argued the measure as written by Republicans would give Mr. Mnuchin too much discretion to decide which companies receive aid, calling the proposal a “slush fund” for the administration. NY Times

3/23/20 The World Health Organization states more than 300,000 cases were reported from almost every country in the world. Johns Hopkins University, which cited slightly different numbers, reported that global coronavirus infections were on track to reach 350,000.

3/23/20 Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D)  announced that schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year.

3/23/20 Rhode Island postpones its presidential primary until June 2.

3/23/20 South Africa announces for a nationwide lockdown for 21 days

• Number of cases in South Africa rose to 402, a 47 percent jump from the day before.

3/23/20 Stocks plunged, after the emergency fiscal stimulus package was twice rejected by the Senate 

3/23/20 The U.K. issued a three-week national lockdown, with strict new measures to limit people’s movement. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the lockdown will be enforced by police.

3/23/20 Team USA’s Olympic and Paralympic Committee surveyed more than 1,700 athletes and issued a statement urging the International Olympic Committee to postpone the 2020 Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo.

3/23/20 Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) issued a statewide “stay home” order, telling residents they must stay home unless they are “pursuing an essential activity.”

3/23/20 West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) issued a statewide stay-at-home order, telling residents the disease caused by the coronavirus is “really serious stuff.”

3/23/20 Saudi Arabia issued a nationwide curfew between 7 a.m. and 6 a.m. local time for the next 21 days. The country already halted international flights, closed public venues and suspended work at most institutions, as the number of confirmed cases rose to 511.

3/23/20 Hong Kong announced plans to ban all tourist arrivals in an attempt to curb the number of new coronavirus cases.

• The city had 357 total confirmed cases and four deaths, but most of the new cases were people with a recent travel history.

3/23/20 Iran records more than 1,400 new cases in the past 24 hours and 127 new deaths. T

• Total number of cases rose to 23,049 and the death toll to 1,812.

3/23/20 Spain’s coronavirus death toll topped 2,000, more than doubling in just three days.

• The country, the second hardest-hit in Europe, had 33,090 confirmed cases and 2,182 deaths.

3/23/20 The Iraqi government extends a ban on travel in and out of Baghdad to March 28. Also extended its ban on all flights in and out of the country’s airports.

• Number of confirmed cases rose to 233 cases and 20 deaths.

3/23/20 Convicted rapist, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, 68, tested positive for coronavirus.

3/23/20 Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said that her husband, law professor John Bessler, tested positive for coronavirus.

3/23/20 Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) issued a stay-at-home advisory and ordered all non-essential businesses to close.

3/23/20 Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed a “stay home, stay safe” executive order to bar non-essential businesses from requiring employees to leave their homes.

3/23/20 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the state will begin three studies of potential coronavirus treatments in the coming week, as the state’s number of confirmed cases grew to more than 20,000.

3/23-27/20 The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (Grimm) published a study summarizing interviews with 323 hospitals. The study confirmed that hospitals are desperately short of personal protective equipment, and have been unable get coronavirus test results for patients. The 40-page report

Image Credit- Unknown

• Due to shortage of safety gear at a Mount Sinai hospital in New York, nurses resort to wearing trash bags. Their image on Facebook goes viral.

3/23/20 In coronavirus tweet storm, Trump touts suspect ‘cure’ and potential easing of guidelines to boost economy

• The president’s tweet came as coronavirus surpassed 350,000 confirmed infections around the world, with a death toll rising past 15,000.
• Worldwide, cases have doubled in the past week, according to the WHO, and deaths have nearly tripled. (Source) 

3/23/20 Trump Retweets post sent by his son, Donald Trump Jr., promoting a story in the conservative outlet Breitbart News with the headline “WHO Spread False Chinese Government Propaganda: Coronavirus Not Contagious Among Humans.” The title is inflammatory and has nothing to do with the title. 

3/24/20 Blaming China: Sens. Josh Hawley R-MO) and Tom Cotton (R are calling for the Chinese Communist Party to be held accountable for its role in the coronavirus outbreak that has resulted in thousands of deaths and a global economic crisis. (Source)

• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.) introduced a bill this week that would bar taxpayer money, including funding from coronavirus recovery legislation, from being given to Chinese government-linked businesses.

3/24/20 The Trump administration is steadily pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks during pandemic. (Time) 

3/24/20 India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces a lockdown of 21 days for the country’s 1.3 billion residents. 

3/24/20 Chinese authorities announced that travel restrictions in and out of the city of Wuhan will be lifted on April 8.

3/24/20 Egypt announced plans for a two-week, 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew for more than 100 million people across the country.

3/24/20 India’s prime minister Narendra Modi ordered a three-week lockdown for the 1.3 billion people in the country, The government also imposed curfews, halted domestic travel and suspended train and bus services in many Indian states. View videos on youtube of police hitting offenders with sticks. 

3/24/20 France goes into a two-month state of emergency, part of an emergency law that was passed to give the government special powers to enforce the countrywide lockdown that began two weeks ago.

3/24/20 The U.K.’s death toll jumped by 25 percent, after 87 new fatalities were reported in the past 24 hours, the country’s highest daily increase.

3/24/20 Coronavirus cases topped 50,000 in the U.S., with 637 deaths nationwide.

3/24/20 Dow Jones Industrial Average surging by more than 2,000 points for its biggest daily points gain ever. The increases came after news that a $2 trillion stimulus bill was close to approval.

3/24/20 The White House warned people who have been in New York recently to quarantine themselves for 14 days if they leave the state.

• With more than 25,000 cases, New York was the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.

3/24/20 Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who tested positive for coronavirus and remained in quarantine, announced a shelter-in-place order for the city’s residents. Miami Dade closed their beach 3/19/20 after Spring Breakers refused to Social Distance. 

3/24/20 Trump and other administration officials tout a milestone in testing, saying by that day the U.S. will have done “more testing” in eight days than South Korea had done “in eight weeks.” But on a per-capita basis, the U.S. still lags behind South Korea, and other countries, as Fact Checks explains.

• Trump says, without evidence, that the U.S. test “is considered the best test.” One expert told us there’s “no reason to believe US tests are any better (or worse)” than those being run in other countries.

3/24/20  Cuomo, New York states the state had an urgent need for more ventilators to deal with an anticipated peak in demand in two weeks for patients needing help to breathe. The state will need at least 30,000 ventilators, he said, and it so far had obtained 7,000.  

• Federal government had, to that point, only provided an additional 400 ventilators, though Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview on Fox News later that day that the federal government would be sending 4,000 more to New York in the next two days.

3/24/20  Trump via FOX News -‘So he had a chance to buy, in 2015, 16,000 ventilators at a very low price and he turned it down. I’m not blaming him or anything else, but he shouldn’t be talking about us. He’s supposed to be buying his own ventilators. We’re going to help. 

We’re working very, very hard for the people of New York. We’re working along with him, and then I watch him on the show, complaining. And he had 16,000 ventilators that he could have had at a great price and he didn’t buy them.

• Fact Check: The president read directly from the headline of a story in the Gateway Pundit, a conservative website, which originally stated, “NY Gov. Cuomo Rejected Buying Recommended 16,000 Ventilators in 2015 for Pandemic, Established Death Panels and Lottery Instead.”
• The article was about a syndicated column by Betsy McCaughey, a former Republican lieutenant governor of New York,

3/24/20 Trump at a  March 24 virtual town hall from the White House Rose Garden that aired on Fox News. He argues that the current coronavirus pandemic cannot be compared to the 1918 flu pandemic because of how deadly the latter was.You can’t compare this to 1918 where close to 100 million people died. That was a flu, which — a little different. But that was a flu where if you got it you had a 50/50 chance, or very close, of dying.

I think we’re substantially under 1% because the people that get better are not reporting. So we only know people that go to doctors and go to hospitals, and we’re taking that. And we’re still a little bit above 1%. When you add all of the people — the millions of people that have it, that get better, we’re substantially less than 1%. Fact Check 

3/24/20 Trump  “I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” — Fox News virtual town hall

• “I brought some numbers here, we lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu. We don’t turn the country off, I mean every year. Now when I heard the number, we average 37,000 people a year. Can you believe that? And actually this year we’re having a bad flu season, but we lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off. We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn’t call up the automobile companies, say, ‘Stop making cars. We don’t want any cars anymore.’ We have to get back to work.” — Fox News virtual town hall

3/24/20 Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) issued a stay-at-home order for the state that included the closure of all non-essential businesses.

• The state had 95 confirmed coronavirus cases and 7 deaths.

3/24/20 The Great Wall of China partially reopened after being closed for nearly two months due to the coronavirus outbreak.

3/24/20 Ford that it would be working with GE Healthcare, which also manufactures ventilators. It will be more than a month.

3/24/20 President Trump approved disaster declarations for the states of Iowa and Louisiana. Governor John Bel Edwards (D)

• Iowa had 124 confirmed cases and reported its first death that day, while Louisiana had more than 1,300 cases and 46 deaths. Iowa has not Stay At Home Ordinance. Kim Reynolds (R) is the governor 

3/24/20 Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the efforts of businesses to meet the nation’s needs. “It’s been really amazing to see these big, strong, powerful — in some cases, very small companies, family-owned companies — step up and make a lot of great product for what we’re going through and what we will continue to be going through for a while,”…

• ProPublica examined the seven hotel properties and dozen U.S. country clubs owned by the Trump Organization and could find no sign that any are taking the sorts of civic-minded steps the president has urged. T
• he New York governor’s list details 31 contributions from “major corporations, philanthropic organizations and celebrities” aimed at increasing the state’s “supply capacity” amid the pandemic’s surge.
• It includes donations from Goldman Sachs (195,000 masks); Facebook (2,500 gallons of hand sanitizer), and TV host Kelly Ripa and her husband ($1 million cash). The name “Trump” does not appear on the list. (ProPublica) 

3/24/20– Quid Pro Quo: Trump did indeed suggest governors needed to engage in some form of behavioral quid pro quo in obtaining assistance from the federal government to respond to the coronavirus pandemic,

• THE PRESIDENT: I think they should be appreciative, because you know what? When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps [of Engineers]. They’re not appreciative to FEMA. It’s not right. These people are incredible. They’re working 24 hours a day. Mike Pence — I mean, Mike Pence, I don’t think he sleeps anymore. These — these are people that should be appreciated…… tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, “Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan.” All — it doesn’t make any difference what happens —…THE PRESIDENT: No, no. You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.

Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for? What would you think if that president said, “I would like you to do us a favor? I’ll meet with you, and send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.”

Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president has abused his office? That he’d betrayed the national interest, and that he was trying to corrupt the electoral process? I believe the evidentiary record shows wrongful acts on those scale here.  Pam Karlan, who in Dec. 2019 testified as an expert witness in the House impeachment proceedings against Trump.

3/24/20 Hawaii David Ige (D)  “stay at home” order for Hawaii residents. The order took effect March 25 and will last through at least April 30.

DAY 85

---

3/25/20 Trump blames Media for keeping USA closed.

3/25/20 Trump asks South Korea for COVID test kids. South Korea also had undertaken big efforts to isolate infected individuals and trace their contacts with others, including by publicly releasing information on those individuals’ recent movements, which has raised privacy concerns.)

Day 85

3/25/20 South Africa announced for a 21-day nationwide lockdown, after the number of confirmed cases jumped to 709 from 554, making it the hardest-hit country in sub-Saharan Africa.

3/25/20 The WHO warned that the U.S. could become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

• The country recorded 54,810 coronavirus cases, including 781 deaths.

3/25/20 Prince Charles, 71, tested positive for coronavirus.

3/25/20 Britain’s parliament closed for at least four weeks as part of the government’s efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus.

3/25/20 Spain surpassed China in nationwide deaths from coronavirus, becoming second only to Italy.

• Spain reported 738 new deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total number of fatalities  to 3,434.

3/25/20 Thailand’s prime minister announced a state of emergency as the country reported 827 confirmed cases and four deaths.

3/25/20 Italy’s death toll surpassed 7,500, after 683 new deaths were reported in the past 24 hours.

• The country reported nearly 75,000 confirmed cases.

3/25/20 President Trump approved disaster declarations for Florida (DeSantis (R), Texas (Greg Abbott (R) and North Carolina (Roy Cooper (D)

3/25/20 Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) issued a stay-at-home order for the state’s 5.6 million residents, other than those performing essential services.

3/25/20 Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R)  announced a stay-at-home order for at least 21 days.

3/25/20 The Senate passed a massive $2 trillion stimulus package designed to ease the economic blow from the coronavirus pandemic. The bill was sent to the House.

3/25/20 The 74th Tony Awards and the 2020 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event were postponed. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event will now take place on Nov. 7.

3/25/20 –Tweet: Trump responded to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic by tweeting that the U.S. had undertaken “far more” COVID-19 coronavirus testing than “any other nation,” including South Korea: Trump proceeded to answer his own question, stating: “38 million people. That’s bigger than anything we have. 38 million people all tightly wound together. We have vast farmlands, we have vast areas where they don’t have much of a problem … in some cases they have no problem whatsoever”: Multiple sources, including a United Nations report on the world’s cities puts the 2018 population of Seoul (the city) at just under 10 million people, representing a bit under 20% of the country’s entire population Fact Check 

3/25/20 – 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment. System is not working

3/25/20 The Trump administration is expected to soon direct how manufacturers will distribute crucial medical supplies — including protective gear and ventilators — to combat the coronavirus outbreak, alleviating what U.S. governors have complained is a chaotic marketplace for the products. (Source)

3/25/20 — The United Nations launches a $2 billion global humanitarian response plan appeal to assist vulnerable countries in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Funds would go to laboratory equipment, medical supplies, handwashing stations, public information campaigns, and the creation of air bridges and hubs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to move humanitarian workers and supplies.

3/25/20 Politico announces that Trump failed to follow the Pandemic Playbook; the strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics, which POLITICO is detailing for the first time. Other recommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act (Politico)

3/26/20 During a White House coronavirus task force briefing on March 26, in which Trump mentioned the number of respirators, face shields and ventilators that had so far been distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the president said: “We took over an empty shelf. We took over a very depleted place, in a lot of ways.” (again)

• Fact Check: Read full story:  As of 2016, there were at least six warehouses holding “approximately $7 billion in products across more than 900 separate line items,” according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

3/26/20– Trump blames  Governors: Interview with Sean Hannity, Trump complains: about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (“She is a new governor and it’s not been pleasant”), Washington governor Jay Inslee, and the demand by various hospital staff for more ventilator machines (“You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”). Friday, on Twitter, he added General Motors CEO Mary Barra (“Always a mess with Mary B.”)

3/26/20 Trump’s reelection campaign is threatens legal action against local TV stations in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if they don’t pull a Democratic anti-Trump commercial that uses clips of the president talking about the coronavirus outbreak. The campaign says the ad is false.

• Note that Trump campaign launches same type of video (with no truths) against Biden

3/26/20– Deaths in the U.S. passed 1,000, as confirmed cases nationwide rose to more than 68,100.

3/26/20– Iran banned intercity travel, as confirmed cases in the country surpassed 29,400 and the death toll hit 2,234.

3/26/20– New Zealand starts a one-month mandatory lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.

3/26/20– Russia announced plans to ground all international flights, with exceptions for repatriation flights bringing Russian citizens home and those with special government approval.

3/26/20– President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy (D) as confirmed cases went to 4,402.

3/26/20 Florida Fewer than a third of qualified applicants receive benefits in Florida, which puts the Sunshine State at the bottom of national rankings, said state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democrat representing Miami-Dade. He’s heard of people spending hours on the site this week and still not accessing state benefits. (Source)

3/26/20 For the most part, the companies … We say, “We need this,” and they say, “Don’t bother. We’re going to do it.” I mean, we — we’re dealing with Ford, General Motors, 3M. We’re dealing with great companies. They want to do this. They want to do this. They’re doing things that — that frankly, they don’t need somebody to walk over there with a — with a hammer and say, “Do it.” They are getting it done.

3/26/20 President Trump said that he planned to label different areas of the country as at a “high risk, medium risk or low risk” to the spread of the coronavirus, as part of new federal guidelines to help states decide whether to relax or enhance their quarantine and social distancing measures….“I think we can start by opening up certain parts of the country, the farm belt, certain parts of the Midwest, other places,” he said.  They have it under control, they’re incredible governors, they’re incredible senators, they have it under control, they put people immediately under quarantine.”

• Implied: the ‘lagging pace of the virus in red states is caused by Republican governance.
• Red states are not identifying patients with the coronavirus and putting them in quarantine. They are experiencing the same unchecked community spread as blue states, and while the virus has taken hold more slowly, they are catching up rapidly.
•  Nate Silver points out, “Nine of the ten states that have seen the most rapid increase in coronavirus from Monday to Thursday are states that voted for Trump in 2016.”

3/26/20 Total confirmed cases in USA = 82,404

3/26/20 – Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, misleadingly claimed that 19 states — “almost 40% of the country” — “have less than 200 cases” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

• In fact, 17 states with 7.2% of the U.S. population have fewer than 200 confirmed cases each. United States passed China and became the country with the most confirmed coronavirus cases in the world.
• As of March 26, the U.S. had more than 83,000 confirmed cases and more than 1,200 deaths, according to data collected by John Hopkins University. Fact Check 

3/26/20 The Indianapolis 500, the world’s oldest automobile race, has been postponed until Aug. 23.

3/26/20 Wall Street rallied for the third straight day, despite record-breaking unemployment claims in the U.S.

3/26/20 The number of cases in California climbed past 3,000.

• Number of deaths statewide stood at 65.

3/26/20 Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) announces a stay-at-home, residents are to remain in their homes as much as possible and for nonessential businesses to temporarily close. The state also announced its first coronavirus death, in addition to a total of 90 confirmed cases.

3/26/20 – Schumer sent Trump a letter criticizing the “the tardiness and inadequacy” of his administration’s response, and warning him that shortages of medical equipment, personal protective equipment, testing supplies, and other necessary goods were “beyond acute” in both New York and other areas with high numbers of coronavirus cases. While companies that volunteer to produce ventilators and PPE are to be commended and are appreciated, America cannot rely on a patchwork of uncoordinated voluntary efforts to combat the awful magnitude of this pandemic,” 

• “It is long past the time for your Administration to designate a senior military officer to fix this urgent problem. That officer should be given full authority under the Defense Production Act (DPA) to complete and rapidly implement a plan for the increased production, procurement and distribution of critically-needed medical devices and equipment.”

3/26/20  Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday announced a total relaxation of environmental rules in response to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing power plants, factories and other facilities to determine for themselves if they are able to meet legal requirements on reporting air and water pollution.

3/27/20 Trump accused Schumer of getting caught up in the “impeachment hoax” and being “missing in action, except when it comes to the ‘press.”

• Fact Check: Impeachment was December 18. 2019 over 3 months ago

3/27/20 Letter goes to Alex Azar on the CDC not tracking race and ethnic demographic information. Without demographic data on the race and ethnicity of patients being tested, the rate of positive test results, and outcomes for those with COVID-19, it will be impossible for practitioners and policy makers to address disparities in health outcomes and inequities in access to testing and treatment as they emerge. This lack of information will exacerbate existing health disparities and result in the loss of lives in vulnerable communities. It will also hamper the efforts of public health officials to track and contain the novel coronavirus in the areas that are at the highest risk of continued spread. (Source) 

3/27/20, Trump appoints Navarro to coordinate the federal government’s Defense Production Act policy response during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

3/27/20 President Donald Trump on Friday blames Rep. Thomas Massie, calling him a “third rate Grandstander” after the Kentucky Republican signaled he would oppose a $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.

3/27/20President Trump signs H.R. 748, the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security” (CARES) Act.

3/27/20 Trump insults blames Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D)

3/27/20 Italy reports the Highest single day death toll of 919. 

• more than 86,000 confirmed cases and 9,134 total deaths nationwide.

3/27/20 Global coronavirus cases topped 500,000, as the worldwide death toll rose to 24,082, according to Johns Hopkins University.

3/27/20 Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus.

3/27/20 New York’s coronavirus death toll surpassed 500, and the number of confirmed cases rose to 44,635, a 20 percent increase over the past 24 hours.

3/27/20 The CIA warns its employees not to take hydroxychloroquine, the medication touted by the president, because it can result in sudden death. (Source)

3/27/20 President Trump signed the $2 trillion coronavirus economic stimulus bill was passed in a bipartisan vote in the House.

3/27/20 Coronavirus cases in the U.S. are over 100,000, the most in the world.

More than 1,500 deaths reported nationwide

3/27/20 North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) announced plans for a stay-at-home order for the state’s 10 million-plus residents.

3/27/20 Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) issued a statewide stay-at-home order for at least two weeks.

3/27/20 France’s prime minister Edouard Philippe extends coronavirus lockdown by two weeks until April 15. The country recorded 37,575 confirmed cases and 2,314 deaths, with the number of positive tests doubling every three to four days.

3/27/20 Abbott labs announces that it has received emergency use authorization from the FDA for its point-of-care test, which provides results within 13 minutes. Unlike the LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics tests, specimens don’t need to be mailed in to be tested — a process that can take several days — and instead can be run on a toaster-sized machine in urgent care clinics or doctors’ offices.

Day 88

3/29/20  Fauci said that even with mitigation efforts that have been put into effect, 100,000 to 200,000 Americans could die from the disease.

3/29/20 We’re getting them tremendous amounts of supplies,” he said of health care workers. (WH) Doctors have started to wear garbage bags.  Word goes out that Trump may not treat states he “views as hostile on the same terms as states he views as friendly.”

• Illinois: Wrong masks sent in a load of 300,000.
• Michigan (D) got only half of the number that was supposed to be in a shipment of 450,000.
• Massachusetts (D) which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders.
• Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of California said he received 170 broken ones from the national stockpile as well as good ones. 
• Colorado (R)  sent 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,”
• Alabama opened a shipment of medical masks from the stockpile, they found more than 5,000 with rot. They had expired in 2010

3/29/20 Trump accused hospitals on Sunday of hoarding ventilators that are in scarce supply across the United States as the coronavirus spreads, adding any hospitals not using the devices must release them. (Reuters) No proof.

3/29/20 Controversy. Many media do not want to attend full press briefings

3/29/20 Trump said, “I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers (for ventilators) that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.” (interview with Hannity) 

• Next Day Trump denies saying that Trump did question governors’ ventilator requests. Trump at one point telling Alcindor, “Be nice. Don’t be threatening

3/30/20 Trump said that a final US coronavirus death toll somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 people would indicate that his administration has “done a very good job.” Election argument he’s preparing to make  how his handling of the crisis was a success — no matter the outcome, and regardless of his past statements.

3/30/30-WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is poised to roll back ambitious Obama-era vehicle mileage standards and raise the ceiling on damaging fossil fuel emissions for years to come, gutting one of the United States’ biggest efforts against climate change….

• Delaware Sen. Tom Carper (D) on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, called it “the height of irresponsibility for this administration to finalize a rollback that will lead to dirtier air while our country is working around the clock to respond to a respiratory pandemic whose effects may be exacerbated by air pollution. 

3/30/20  – Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16

3/30/20 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Gun control activists on Monday criticized guidance issued by President Donald Trump’s administration recommending that states find that gun stores are critical businesses that can stay open during the coronavirus crisis

3/30/20 Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari announced partial lockdowns for the cities of Lagos, Abuja and Ogun State for at least 14 days. Residents of the three cities were ordered to stay at home and businesses and offices were closed.

3/30/20 Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) held a briefing in Little Rock on the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The governor announced he created a new steering committee to direct the state’s anticipated $1.25 billion in federal funds appropriated through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The state’s health director also provided an update on the total number of cases and deaths resulting from COVID-19. The state’s parks secretary encouraged Arkansans to enjoy the state parks but cautioned residents to maintain a healthy six-foot separation

3/30/20 Moscow announced a lockdown for the city’s 13 million residents. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin signed an order restricting freedom of movement in the Russian capital and the surrounding suburbs.

3/30/20 The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were rescheduled for July 23,2021. 

3/30/20 Spain became the third country to surpass the total number of reported coronavirus infections in China.

• Spain recorded 85,195 cases
• China reported 81,470 confirmed cases.

3/30/20 New York City reported its first death of a minor, as the city’s death toll rose to 790. The minor had an underlying health condition, according to city health officials.

3/30/20 Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued a stay-at-home order for the state.

• 1,000 cases with  8.5 million residents

3/30/20 Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey ordered a stay-at-home.

• 1,157 confirmed coronavirus cases and 20 deaths. Population 7.2 Million 

3/30/20 France reported 418 new coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, the country’s highest jump in a single day. Number of confirmed cases in France rose to 44,550 with 3,024 deaths.

3/30/20 Italy’s government extended its nationwide lockdown until the Easter season in April.

• Country’s confirmed cases rose to 101,739 and the death toll hit 11,591.

3/30/20  federal authorities invoked that order when they charged a Brooklyn man for hoarding surgical masks, medical gowns and other medical supplies that authorities said he was selling at inflated prices from his home.

3/30/20 Again Trump during an interview with the hosts of “Fox & Friends.” “We started off with an empty shelf,” he said, adding, “We didn’t have very much in terms of medical product … and we built something really good.”

3/30/20 Again Trump says We inherited a broken test,” he said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” 

• There could be no test for the virus that causes COVID-19 until the virus emerged. Trump’s claim that his administration inherited a broken test “doesn’t make sense,” said infectious disease researcher Christopher Mores at George Washington University’s School of Public Health.

3/30/20– Fox & Friends” phone interview, Trump also misleadingly noted that 4,000 ventilators delivered to New York from the federal stockpile are being kept in a “warehouse which happens to be located  — in Edison, New Jersey,” suggesting New York didn’t need them. Cuomo said the ventilators are being stored in anticipation of peak demand in the coming weeks.

3/30/20 Democratic Senators Demand Answers on Trump’s Secretive Border Expulsions Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee ask the Department of Homeland Security to explain why it thinks emergency powers granted to the CDC allow it to bypass existing asylum laws. (Source)

• Coronavirus spread into several ICE facilities, with 30 cases (19 detainees and 11 staff) confirmed across 16 facilities as of April 7.
• Under pressure from advocates and Democrats to slow the spread of the coronavirus by releasing detainees, ICE told Congress that it identified about 600 medically vulnerable detainees for potential release, and that about 160 were released as of March 30.

3/30/20A scroll through Trumps Twitter feed reveals his longtime ratings obsessions. Using the “search” function at the amazing Trump Twitter Archive reveals 341 occurrences of the word “ratings” in Trump’s tweets.

Day 91

3/31/20 “I mean, I’ve had many friends, business people, people with great, actually, common sense, they said, ‘Why don’t we ride it out?’ A lot of people have said, a lot of people have thought about it, ‘Ride it out, don’t do anything, just ride it out, and think of it as the flu.’ But it’s not the flu.” — White House task force briefing

3/31/20 The U.S. had conducted 1.1 million tests, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

3/31/20 New coronavirus cases in Spain increased by more than 9,000 in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to more than 94,000.

• The death toll in Spain rose to 8,18

3/31/20 Trump changes his story “I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, I knew it could be maybe good,” Trump said. “I don’t want to be a negative person.” (Source)

3/31/20 Crossed Wires: Officials asked the Thais for help—only to be informed by the puzzled voices on the other side of the line that a U.S. shipment of the same supplies, the second of two so far, was already on its way to Bangkok. Source

• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) Trump, you incompetent idiot! You sent 18 tons of PPE to China early but ignored warnings & called COVID19 concerns a hoax,”  tweeted , referring to 17.8 tons of medical supplies—including masks, gowns, gauze, and respirators—the U.S. delivered in February to help with the outbreak in China. “You’ve endangered doctors, nurses, aids [sic], orderlies, & janitors — all risking their lives to save ours. Pray 4 forgiveness for the harm that you’re causing!”
• President Donald Trump seems attuned to the political hazards. During Monday’s task force briefing, he emphasized that the U.S. was sending only “things that we don’t need” to other countries. “We’re going to be sending approximately $100 million worth of things – of surgical and medical and hospital things to Italy,” he announced.

3/31/20 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo press conference “We’ve now made available a total of $274 million in funding to as many as 64 countries,” money he said “would go to some of the world’s most at-risk peoples.”New Jersey and Connecticut, the State Department boasted in a press release that the United States was “Leading the Humanitarian and Health Assistance Response to COVID-19.” (Source)

3/31/20 The government has yet to curtail exports by U.S. companies, roughly 280 million masks in warehouses around the U.S. were purchased by foreign buyers on Monday alone, according to Forbes. 

• A FEMA spokesperson said the agency “has not actively encouraged or discouraged U.S. companies from exporting overseas,” noting that various U.S. agencies are coordinating their activities with their overseas counterparts

3/31/20 Gov. Mike DeWine  (R) of Ohio tells CNN the state isn’t “quite sure” when it will see a peak in cases but expects it will be “between mid-April and mid-May.” DeWine says: “Part of this is driven by the fact that we don’t have, you know, widespread testing. That is not unique to Ohio.”

3/31/20 Wall Street ended one of the worst quarters in stock market history

3/31/20 South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) ordered all non-essential businesses in the state to close.

3/31/20 Coronavirus deaths in New York City topped 1,000, as confirmed cases in rose to 41,771.

3/31/20The Federal Bureau of Prisons ordered a lockdown of its facilities in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

3/31/20 Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) issued a “stay healthy at home mandate” requiring people to stay at their residence except for essential work.

3/31/20 President Trump approves disaster declarations for Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) and Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine (R)

3/31/20 Italy’s National Institute of Health said the outbreak was reaching a plateau in the country

• Italy’s death toll rose to more than 12,000.

3/31/20 80% of Americans are under lockdown

3/3120 The White House Pushed FEMA To Give its Biggest Coronavirus Contract to a Company That Never Had to Bid he Trump administration has rushed through more than $760 million in contracts outside the usual bidding process during its haphazard coronavirus response. It’s highly unusual for the White House to step into FEMA’s supply bidding process. (Propublica) 

A little more than a week after a White House official publicly praised the deal, AirBoss’ stock price has more than doubled on the Toronto exchange.

Day 91 

Trump administration continues to reject calling for nationwide stay-at-home orders, but instead says that each governor should decide for themselves. It is not clear whether a president has the authority under existing federal statutes to adopt a binding nationwide stay-at-home order.

4/1/20 Wimbledon tennis tournament was canceled.

4/1/20 India bans exports of exports of anti-malarial drugs as countries globally stockpiled .

4/1/20 Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D)  shut down all nonessential businesses and encouraged residents to stay home for weeks before issuing a formal order, a message he had been trying to send for weeks: “STAY HOME for our State,” he said on Twitter. About 3.1 million people

4/1/20 Pennsylvania: March 23, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) began ordering an expanding number of counties to stay at home, including in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions. On April 1, he announced he was enacting the order statewide. “We appreciate the shared sacrifice of all 12.8 million Pennsylvanians,” he said. “We are in this together.” 

• Number of confirmed cases hit 5,805 with at least 74 deaths.

4/1/20 West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced that the state’s primary will be delayed until June 9.

4/1/20 922,000 Global cases of COVID19, 656,000 active, 193,000 recoveries and 46,000 deaths .

4/1/20 Trump’s new coronavirus argument: 2 million people are being saved

4/1/20 Chinese officials announced new lockdown guidelines for all villages in the country’s central Jia county, in an effort to avoid a second wave of coronavirus infections.

4/1/20  An  open letter signed by 74 journalism professors and leading journalists that lambasted Fox News for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about the outbreak. The professors directly cited Hannity’s statement that the Democrats and media overplayed coronavirus to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax”.

4/1/20-President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive.

• Not mentioned was the neglected additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway

4/1/20 Trump ‘We have to get our country back, we have to start moving again, we have to start working again,” “Now, they’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off. But when you start closing up entire transportation systems and then opening them up, that’s a very tough thing to do.” (Source) 

• The CDC is not testing passengers for COVID-19 as they get on or off airplanes and trains.
  
• The federal government is screening certain passengers at 13 airports.
  
• Screening can include looking for symptoms, but it’s not the same as a test.

4/1/20 Trump said that “banning dangerous foreign travel that threatens the health of our people” was one of the actions his administration took that was “far earlier than anyone would have thought and way ahead of anybody else.”  

• Fact Check: Not true 1.) It was not a travel ban 2.) They were not the first, 36 countries imposed travel restrictions, including the U.S., by Feb. 2.  (suspended flights two days before U.S. implemented restrictions), the EU did not impose travel restrictions against China specifically.
• Australia imposed its entry ban on travelers from China, which was quite similar to the United States’, one day before the United States acted.
• New Zealand and Israel imposed their travel bans on the same day as the United States.”
• The Marshall Islands, imposed the earliest travel ban against China on January 24,”
• “North Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Macau, Kazakhstan, Micronesia, Laos, Malaysia, etc. all imposed some form of travel restriction against China in January as well.
• A few African nations imposed travel restrictions against China in January as well, such as Mauritius and Seychelles.

4/1/20 – Georgia Governor Brian Kemp (R) finally announced a statewide stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of coronavirus on Wednesday. Georgia was one of twelve states that had not yet issued such an order to protect its citizens. (Source)

• Making the announcement, Kemp justified his decision by saying he only now was “finding out that this virus is now transmitting before people see signs.”

• shelter-in-place order that exempts gun stores, considering them an essential business

• 4/4/20 Some Georgia beaches will reopen this weekend following an executive order issued by Gov. Brian Kemp (R) that overrode local shelter-in-place mandates from a number of cities. “This Executive Order thus lifted any local ordinances or orders that had closed or restricted access to Georgia beaches,” superseding local government blocks and opening all beaches in Georgia, Hildebrandt 

4/1/20  Pence said, “I don’t believe the president has ever belittled the threat of the coronavirus.” (CNN)

4/1/20 Russia sends a plane of medical supplies to USA. These are purchased (Source) 

4/1/20  UN chief Antonio Guterres warns the coronavirus pandemic presents the world with its “worst crisis” since World War II

• Global total of confirmed COVID-19 cases reached one million and the worldwide death toll topped 50,000.

4/1/20   Trump lashes out at Fox News correspondent John Roberts who asked Trump about his 2018 decision to eliminate the National Security Council’s pandemic-response office. Trump lashed out, “You know that’s a false story, what you just said is a false story … You shouldn’t be repeating a story you know is false,” accusing Roberts of “working for CNN.” (The charge of committing legitimate journalism is the most serious Trump could think to hurl at a Fox News employee.)

• The Trump administration, with John Bolton newly at the helm of the White House National Security Council, began dismantling the team in charge of pandemic response, firing its leadership and disbanding the team in spring 2018.

4/1/20 New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.”

• Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)

4/1/20 Washington DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser issued a stay-at-home order for all residents, joining the nearby states of Maryland and Virginia.

4/1/20 Donald Trump is suggesting the United States should treat Germany more like an enemy because the two countries were adversaries in World War II as the president again lobbied for closer US-Russian relations.

4/1/20  Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that there were 12,700 ventilators in the stockpile.

• There were 3,487 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (CNN)

4/2/20– McConnell  claims that the impeachment trial “diverted” presidential and congressional Republican attention from the threat of coronavirus emerging in China. McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the outbreak “came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything every day was all about impeachment.”  Trump even responded, saying, “I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached.”  Trump was officially impeached on Dec. 19, 2019 (Fact Check)

• Trump visited a golf course on Jan. 18 and 19, Feb. 1 and 15, and March 7 and 8. All of these golf outings took place at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Trump also hosted rallies on Jan. 9 (Ohio), 14 (Wisconsin), 28 (New Jersey) 30 (Iowa), and on Feb. 10 (New Hampshire), 19 (Arizona), 20 (Colorado), 21 (Nevada), and 28 (South Carolina). 

4/2/20 – 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment.

4/2/20 Jared Kushner takes over Corona Virus Task Force.. he will be working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to oversee the distribution of much-needed medical supplies to states battling a rising number of covid-19 cases…..Kushner then accused some governors and U.S. senators of requesting supplies without knowing exactly what they need and suggested that local officials should be more resourceful in terms of finding equipment within their states before reaching out to the federal government. (Source)

• The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” he said at one point during the briefing. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.” (According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the role of the Strategic National Stockpile “is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.”)

• Kushner formed a ‘shadow’ coronavirus task force with private sector officials to bolster the government’s response to the outbreak. “Project Airbridge,” is the new program where the federal government lines up and pays for flights to bring medical equipment into the U.S. from overseas for private companies. Kushner has bragged about using flights to bring in overseas medical supplies, pointing out it gets them to the United States faster than the traditional method of using ships.  

• Democrats criticized Kushner’s remarks, saying that equipment purchased by federal agencies is for the use of all American taxpayers. (Source)

Fact Check Kushners Comments

• The Strategic National Stockpile was created in 1999 and has provided medicine and supplies to states in response to to biological threats, terrorism and disasters.

4/2/20: Changes were made in description of The Strategic National Stockpile’s role after Jared Kushner, said on April 2: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be states’ stockpiles that they then use.” The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.”

4/2/20 There were 239,279 reported cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.

• In a task force press briefing that same day, Rear Adm. John Polowczyk said that the U.S. has delivered more than 7,600 ventilators to the states, and still has some in reserve.

4/2/20 Georgia Governor Brian Kemp  announced a statewide stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of coronavirus on Wednesday. Georgia was one of twelve states that had not yet issued such an order to protect its citizens.

4/2/20  Spain’s death toll topped 10,000,

• Only Italy had more deaths at 13,555.

4/2/20  The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Iran surpassed 50,000. The country’s death toll also rose to 3,160.

4/2/20  The head of the European Commission announced that Italy will be the first country to receive financial help from the European Union to aid with the economic impact from the pandemic.

4/2/20  Thailand announced plans for a six-hour curfew, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. local time, until further notice.

4/2/20  Russian President Vladimir Putin extended the country’s nationwide work-from-home guidance until the end of April.

4/2/20  Deaths in New York surpassed 2,000, while confirmed cases rose to 92,381.

4/2/20  The Democratic National Committee postponed its summer convention in Milwaukee from July to the week of August 17.

4/2/20  Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. topped 5,000, as confirmed cases nationwide rose to 232,837.

4/2/20  Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced a statewide stay-at-home order.

4/2/20– Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) left it to local officials to impose the most restrictive orders.

• Cities and counties were told to stay home Harris County, Houston; Dallas and Tarrant Counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth region;
• Bexar County, which includes San Antonio.
• On March 31, Mr. Abbott tightened guidelines, but said that “this is not a stay-at-home strategy.” The next day, he released a video message to Texans, saying he had ordered “all Texans to stay at home, except to provide essential services or do essential things like going to the grocery store.” 

4/2/20  The number of coronavirus cases worldwide surpassed 1 million.

• more than 51,000 deaths globally, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

4/2/20 The Secret Service this week reportedly signed a $45,000 contract to rent a fleet of golf carts, saying in a filing that it needed them to protect an unnamed “dignitary” in Sterling, Virginia—home to one of President Donald Trump’s golf clubs. All of Virginia is under a stay-at-home order, but the order allowed golf courses, including Trump’s, to remain open as long as golfers stay six feet apart.

4/2/20 -Trump in response to Schumer letter:  If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the “invisible enemy.” No wonder AOC [U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and others are thinking about running against you in the primary. If they did, they would likely win. (posted on the White House)

• At the time the state of New York has more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases, with 2,935 deaths.
• The United States has a total of 258,611 cases, with 6,660 deaths.

4/2/20– Next Bailout: Pelosi: There are very serious concerns about big money going to big industries in our country without the conditions to be met that that money will be used to benefit the workers and not buybacks, bonuses, dividends, CEO pay, and the rest—so you just want to make sure the money goes where it’s designed to go.” Key goals include safeguards for clean community drinking water, the construction and rehabilitation of community health centers, increased broadband internet access for rural areas and “urban deserts,” repairs for roads and highways, and funds to support the postal service.

• “We see this as part of recovery: emergency, mitigation, recovery. And recovery that directly helps us fight the coronavirus crisis,” 

4/3/20 Opinion Piece: Politics Should Not Determine if Americans Receive Aid To Combat Coronavirus- Last week, details emerged that some states, such as Florida, had received everything they requested from the federal government, while other states, such as Michigan and Louisiana, received only a fraction of the requested supplies.

• Florida’s Republican governor who is vocally supportive of Trump, while the governors of Michigan and Louisiana are Democrats who have been critical of Trump’s coronavirus response. Source 

4/3/20 North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa. Not on lockdown

4/3/20 the World Health Organization (WHO) warned governments in the Middle East that they must act quickly to limit the spread of the coronavirus as cases in the region have risen to nearly 60,000

4/3/20 Trump Fires Bruce who is on the Bailout Oversight Committee. He nominates a new Inspector General for Education.The nominee, Andrew De Mello, is a tax attorney at the Justice Department who has been detailed to the Homeland Security watchdog office since 2019.

4/3/20 2 of the 5 Bailout Oversight committee are gone and another Grimm is under attack. When Trump signed the law, he included a statement which objected to oversight provisions, i.e. Horowitz to consult Congress on picking PRAC staff and empowering the special inspector general within the Treasury Department to tell Congress about any stonewalling

4/3/20 Data shows African Americans are dying from virus at alarming rates.

4/3/20 CDC and masks

4/3/20– Fox News Tucker Carlson criticized Trump administration infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, over his call for a national stay-at-home mandate.

4/3/20  President Trump fired the Intelligence General of the Intelligence Community, Michael Atkinson, who handled the complaint that led to the president’s impeachment. Atkinson was the first to warn Congress last fall about a whistleblower complaint concerning the president’s dealings with Ukraine. Trump notified congressional intelligence committees of the action via letter late Friday after reportedly considering the action for months.

4/3/20 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who had resisted more stringent statewide measures even as cities and counties took action, announced that he would order the state’s more than 21 million residents to largely stay at home.

• The governor said he started coming around to the necessity of a statewide order once the White House extended national guidelines to combat the coronavirus until April 30. “To me, that was, ’People aren’t just going to back to work,’” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee, the state capital. “That’s a national pause button.”

4/3/20 A Berlin city legislator said unidentified Americans somehow acquired 200,000 protective masks that had been meant for first-responders and hospital workers in the German capital. “We consider it an act of modern piracy,” German legislator Andreas Geisel was quoted as saying Friday by the Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. “That’s no way to deal with trans-Atlantic partners.”

4/3/20 President Trump was asked if he could assure New Yorkers that there would be enough ventilators next week, he replied, “No. They should have had more ventilators.”

4/3/20 Alex Azar laid out options for the surging number of newly uninsured Americans. Under the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare, people who recently lost their jobs can buy a health plan from the insurance exchanges for up to 60 days. It’s considered a “qualifying event” allowing jobless people to obtain coverage outside the annual enrollment period, which already passed for the year….Azar’s striking suggestion collides with the administration’s support of a lawsuit to eliminate Obamacare. Scrapping the law could strip 20 million Americans of their coverage, according to projections from the Urban Institute……Trump has refused to reopen the Obamacare exchanges for another enrollment period, going against calls from Democrats and insurers to make it easier for people to replace their insurance coverage. The president said on Thursday it “doesn’t seem fair” that nearly 30 million people remain uninsured in the US.

• Trump is trying to overturn Obama Care at the same time. It is before the Supreme Court.

4/3/20- Drugs running low report NY Times

4/3/20  Navy Fires Captain Who Sought Help for Virus-Stricken Ship Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said the USS Theodore Roosevelt’s commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, “demonstrated extremely poor judgment” in the middle of a crisis. (Fact Check) 

• USS Theodore Roosevelt, with a crew of nearly 5,000, is docked in Guam, and the Navy has said as many as 3,000 will be taken off the ship and quarantined by Friday. More than 100 sailors on the ship have tested positive for the virus, but none is hospitalized. he president blasted Crozier’s decision to write a letter to Navy leaders pleading for help as men on his ship fell sick with the coronavirus. “I thought it was terrible what he did. To write a letter? This isn’t a class on literature,” Trump said.

4/3/20  311 million people in at least 41 states, three counties, eight cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota — had no statewide orders 

4/3/20  President Donald Trump shut down a question from a reporter on Friday, dismissing what he described as a “gotcha question” about his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

• CBS reporter Weijia Jiang questioned why Kushner said “our” stockpile while referring to the federal stockpile of medical supplies versus state stockpiles….It’s such a basic, simple question, and you try and make it so bad,” Trump said. “You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”
• As Jiang continued pressing him, Trump moved on, “I gave you a perfect answer. You know it.”

4/3/20– Fox News “Well, Louisiana is bad but Alabama isn’t,” responded Kilmeade. Louisiana has almost 10,000 confirmed cases. Kilmeade noted how Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) had last week refused to issue a stay-in-place order, claiming “we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” while Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) said it was “difficult to make a blanket policy for the state.”

4/3/20– Trump labels any oversight of his power as a ‘witch hunt’

4/3/20 C.D.C. says all Americans should wear masks. Trump says the rule is voluntary.

4/3/20 Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) announced a shelter-in-place order and asked all residents to take enforcement seriously. “If you will self-enforce this, it will go a long way to slowing the spread,” 

4/3/20 Trump lashes out again at reporter who questioned Kushner’s statement that the ‘Stockpile’ was ours (Federal) Source 

• Then why did he say it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then … ” Jiang said, trying to continue.
• “Because we need it for the government, and we need it for the federal government,” Trump said, as the two talked over each other.
• “Who are you giving it to if it’s not to the states?” Jiang pressed.
• “To keep for our country because the federal government needs it too, not just the states. … When he (Kushner) says ‘our,’ he’s talking about our country … he’s talking about the federal government,” Trump said.

4/3/20 President Trump said on Friday night that he planned to nominate a member of the White House counsel’s office to be the special inspector general to oversee the Treasury Department’s $500 billion bailout fund. Brian D. Miller, is a former federal prosecutor who spent nine years as the inspector general of the General Services Administration. Mr. Miller was nominated for that post in 2004 by President George W. Bush.

• Overruling the Oversight Committee that was in the Bailout program

4/3/20  Almost 40,000 people have traveled directly from China to the U.S. since Trump imposed travel restrictions.

4/3/20– Barr directs the bureau to prioritize the release of prisoners from federal correctional institutions in Louisiana, Connecticut and Ohio, which comprise the bulk of the system’s 91 inmates and 50 staff members who have tested positive for the coronavirus. At least five inmates have died at the federal prison in Oakdale, La., and two have died at the federal prison near Elkton, Ohio. Officials with unions that represent prison workers have said that the reported numbers are likely undercounting the number of infected staff, given the paucity of testing.

4/3/20– By 9 a.m. on Friday, banks had already processed 700 loans totaling $2.5 million for small businesses as the spigot opened on a federal emergency relief program. But that was just the beginning. By early afternoon that number had ballooned to $1.8 billion. And by evening it was $3.2 billion in loans that will go to more than 10,000 small businesses desperate to save themselves.

4/3/20 US Sheds 701,000 Jobs, Ending a Record-Long Hiring Streak The monthly job loss reported by the government, the worst since the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, is still just a small indication of what’s to come. (Fact Check)

4/3/20 Trump announces that he had taken a second test for coronavirus and, like the first, it came back negative. The second test was much simpler and took about 15 minutes. “I’ve done them both and the second one is much more pleasant,” he said. 

4/3/20 Vice President Mike Pence said 50,000 tests would be delivered “each day this week.”

• They are standing at those press conferences saying we can get people tested in 15 minutes, and we can’t,” a senior official at one of the largest Florida hospital systems told ABC News. The official asked for anonymity because they did not want criticism to jeopardize access to federal help. “It’s infuriating and it’s incredibly frustrating.”

4/4/20 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump abruptly fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, sidelining an independent watchdog who played a pivotal role in his impeachment even as his White House struggles with the deepening coronavirus pandemic. (Fact Check) 

• Trump informed the House and Senate intelligence committees late Friday of his decision to fire Michael Atkinson, according to letters obtained by The Associated Press. Atkinson handled the anonymous whistleblower complaint that triggered Trump’s impeachment last year. “I thought he did a terrible job, absolutely terrible,” Mr. Trump said. “He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress.” Capping a long, angry denunciation of the impeachment, he added, “The man is a disgrace to I.G.s. He’s a total disgrace.”

  

4/4/20 President Donald Trump once again touted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. This time, the president falsely claimed that “people with lupus” who take hydroxychloroquine “aren’t catching this horrible virus.” We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data. But I’ll just speak for myself: It’s been out for a long time. It’s a malaria drug. It’s also a drug for lupus. And there’s a — there’s a study out that people with lupus aren’t catching this horrible virus. They’re not — they’re not affected so much by it. Now, maybe that’s correct; maybe it’s false. You’re going to have to check it out. (Fact Check)

• While it’s too early to say whether or not hydroxychloroquine has any protective effects, it’s not true that no lupus patients have developed the disease. In fact, the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance’s registry of COVID-19 patients with rheumatologic disease had 110 validated patients, as of April 2, and 17% of them have lupus.

4/4/20 – U.S. has 296,043 *known* cases and 8,007 deaths of Americans from coronavirus.

4/4/20 Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) resisted a statewide order, saying that she wanted to balance the health of the state’s residents with the health of the economy. “We are not California,” she said on a conference call with reporters, according to AL.com. But after Birmingham, the largest city in the state, issued a shelter-in-place order for its residents, and amid growing pressure, the governor issued a statewide order. “You need to understand we are past urging people to stay at home,” she said. “It is now the law.”

4/4/20 Opinion Piece ‘The poll showed that far more Republicans than Democrats were being influenced by Trump’s dismissive depictions of the virus and the comparably scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously. (Source)

4/4/20 President Donald Trump on Saturday criticized the establishment media at the White House for spreading fear with false reports.

• “Certain media outlets should stop spreading false rumors and creating fear and even panic with the public,” Trump said. “I could name them, but it’s always the same ones, I guess they’re looking for ratings, I don’t know what they’re looking for,” Trump said, calling it “so bad for our country and so bad for the world.”
• The president reminded reporters that they had the lowest approval ratings of anyone during the crisis.
• “You got to put it together for a little while,” Trump said. “Get this over with, and then go back to your fake news. 

4/5/20 Tiger at Bronx Zoo tests positive for COVID 19

4/5/20 House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said it’s unlikely a congressional panel overseeing coronavirus relief will investigate the Trump administration’s initial response to the pandemic that’s claimed thousands of American lives (Source) 

4/5/20 Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) states, after the president suggested states should have prepared their own stockpiles of equipment ahead of the coronavirus pandemic that Trump does not understand the word “federal.”

• “The president does not understand the word federal. Federal Emergency Management Agency. We have a state Emergency Management Agency, but if he were right, why would we ever need a Federal Emergency Management Agency?” Pritzker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s because individual states can’t possibly do what the federal government can do.”

4/5/20 Nevada Steve Sisolak (D) Can’t get 400 ventilators. Would cost over $4Billion Lives are more important. Nevada make own COVID Kits. Private citizens have raised over $10 million 

4/5/20 Article President Donald Trump personally pressed federal health officials to make malaria drugs available to treat the novel coronavirus, though they had been untested for COVID-19….The president is short-circuiting the process with his gut feelings,” said Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School. “We are in an emergency and we need to rely on our government to ensure that all these potential therapies are tested in the most effective and objective way. (Source) .

“It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair,” Trump to Hannity on Fox News. “If we could only have a fair media in this country, our country.”

4/5/20  Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said the current approach to the procurement of medical supplies could be improved. “It literally is a global jungle that we’re competing in now,” Hutchinson said. “I’d like to see a better way, but that’s the reality in which we are.” coronavirus cases in Arkansas have increased to 830, which is less than the state’s projected number of 2,000 cases. “Meet the Press,”

4/5/20  Louisana Gov. John Bel Edwards said if the number of COVID-19 cases continues to surge could run out of ventilators by the end of the week. “Every day we get new information that informs our modeling. We now think it’s probably around the 9th of April before we exceed our ventilator capacity based on the current number on hand and that we’re a couple of days behind that on ICU bed capacity being exceeded,“

4/5/20 United Kingdom: 47,806 people had tested positive for coronaviru.The number of deaths stood at 4,934.

4/5/20 Banks haven’t been able to process loan applications for a new Small Business Administration relief program, companies trying to produce personal protective equipment for medical professionals can’t get the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s attention, and doctors and ventilators at ambulatory surgery centers idled by a soft moratorium on elective operations are on the sidelines…..The biggest issue on the front lines of the coronavirus fight is scarcity. On its own, that’s not a problem of Trump’s making, but it has been aggravated by his insistence that states and cities compete with the federal government and private-sector buyers, including deeper-pocketed hospitals, for test kits, ventilators, masks, gowns and other items.

4/5/20 Japan is  increasing its stockpile of a flu drug called Avigan or favipiravir that scientists think could help treat COVID-19. Two trials China suggested the drug shortened recovery time. Local media say Japan is hoping to triple production from current levels, so that there will be enough to treat 2 million people. Japan has begun clinical trials that will run until the end of June.

Day 96

4/6/20 Missouri Mike Parson (R)  initially rejected stay at home but residents in Kansas City, St. Louis and St. Louis County areas were among those under instructions to stay at home before Gov. Mike Parson (R)

4/6/29 California Gov. Gavin Newsom announces the state would lend 500 ventilators to the national stockpile for use by New York and other states experiencing a crush of coronavirus-related hospitalizations, even as he said the nation’s most populous state needs to find more ventilators of its own.

4/6/20– WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday designated a Russian white supremacist group a “foreign terrorist organization” and hit its members with sanctions. (Source)

• 2/20/20 FBI Director Christopher Wray announced the agency has made hate-fueled violence a top national security priority, on par with foreign terrorist groups such as ISIS.
• List of Hate Groups in the United States

4/6/20 Hospitals continue to confront severe shortages in testing and protective equipment for medical staff working to combat the coronavirus outbreak, according to a government watchdog report released on Monday that appears to undercut President Trump’s assurances that states have sufficient resources.

• Newsom’s (D) decision follows Kate Brown (D) Oregon and Washington committing to transfer ventilators to New York. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said the state will return more than 400 ventilators of the 500 it got from the federal government.

4/6/20 Trump calls a “war” against COVID-19, and labels himself as a wartime president.

Opinion piece: his administration’s efforts to combat the deadly disease, along with its disastrous effects on the U.S. economy, are often creating more problems than they solve.

• Bidding wars for lifesaving equipment,
• a power struggle between Trump’s son-in-law and the vice president,
• political gamesmanship, the centralization of authority and
• decentralization of accountability,
• creation of new government programs while standing bureaucracies are ignored have all contributed to chaos within the political, economic and health care systems.

4/6/20  A crew member aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort docked in New York City tested positive for coronavirus on Monday, a Navy official confirmed to POLITICO.

3

4/6/20 Trump lashes out at Reporter:You’re a third-rate reporter”: Trump lashes out in response to questions about damning IG Christi Grimm  report.

• Details the federal government’s failure to provide hospitals with the testing and equipment resources they need. ….
• Trump suggested it couldn’t be trusted because he wasn’t sure whether the HHS official who put it together — Principal Deputy Inspector General Christi Grimm — was appointed by him. Grimm, however, has experience in the federal government under both Republican and Democratic presidents dating back to the Clinton administration.
• The IG report is based on direct conversations with hospital administrators….The HHS IG report, which is based on a random sample of administrators from 323 hospitals across the country conducted from March 23-27 — before the worst of the coronavirus pandemic hit the US — details a lack of testing supplies and medical gear that’s making things difficult for hospitals, and alludes to the disorganized nature of the federal response. (Source) 

4/6/20 Supreme Court blocks extended voting in Wisconsin. And then, Monday night, the Court unveiled a 5–4 decision saying that votes must go on. the justices are staying home, thousands of voters in Wisconsin must either risk infection by defying a stay-at-home order or forfeit their right to vote in important state elections. (Source)

• Opinion piece…The intensity has bled over into the Wisconsin high court itself. In recent years, one justice was accused of physically assaulting another; Republicans engineered the removal of the long-serving liberal chief justice; and campaigns have seen allegations of sexual misconduct and religious bigotry. Politico 

4/7/20 Trump attacks Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm, following the report from her office. (3/23/20) that described widespread testing delays and supply issues at the nation’s hospitals.  Where did he come from, the inspector general?” Trump said, adding, “What’s his name?” He expressed exasperation upon learning the individual was promoted during the Obama administration.

•  Publicly attacked Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm for publishing a report critical of the federal coronavirus response, tweeting that she was an Obama loyalist attacking him with “Another Fake Dossier” (his spelling).

4/7/20 President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort. A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort.

• Trump on Monday removed Glen Fine from his post, instead naming the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities. Fine’s removal is Trump’s latest foray into the independent federal watchdogs — punctuated with his Friday ouster of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

• This oversight effort was the result of Democratic demands during the congressional fight over the stimulus bill, designed to ensure that Trump didn’t divert funds to his family or political interests. Fine seemed like an ideal choice for this critical job: widely respected by his peers, who see him as talented and independent.

• In Fine’s place, Trump named acting Inspector General of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Sean O’Donnell to oversee the massive spending package. The President also tapped a senior policy official at Customs and Border Protection, Jason Abend, to be the new inspector general at the Pentagon and supervise Fine. (Source)

4/7/20 Trump White House coronavirus task force press briefing,  distorts facts about the Inspector Generals he dismissed as the chief watchdog for spending under the new pandemic relief legislation and the Wisconsin election, which took place as scheduled despite the coronavirus outbreak:

• The president suggested he removed Glenn Fine as the Pentagon’s acting inspector general — preventing him from heading the pandemic relief spending oversight panel — because of Fine’s partisan background. But Fine is a career federal official who has worked under both parties. Asked to explain his decision to replace Fine, Trump started by saying he has been replacing inspectors general from “the Obama era” when the administration gets “reports of bias.”
• “Well, we have … IGs in from the Obama era,” said Trump, using the common Washington shorthand for inspector general.
• When he was told Fine wasn’t necessarily linked to President Barack Obama, Trump replied, “Maybe he was from Clinton.”
• Fine has worked in federal government during both Republican and Democratic administrations and does not have a reputation as a political figure, but rather as an aggressive, independent investigator.

4/7/20 Bernie Sanders concedes

4/7/20 Although President Trump has directed states and hospitals to secure what supplies they can, the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going and how they can get what they need to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. (LA Times)

• Trump and other White House officials, including his close advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner, have insisted that the federal government is using a data-driven approach to procure supplies and direct them where they are most needed.
• Florida, a large medical system saw an order for thermometers taken away.
• Massachusetts were unable to determine where its order of masks went.
• PeaceHealth, a 10-hospital system in Washington, Oregon and Alaska, had a shipment of testing supplies seized recently.

• Texas Association of Community Health Centers, Jose Camacho, told the Times his group was trying to purchase a small order of just 20,000 masks, and the federal government bought it out from under them

• Florida, a swing state with an aggressively pro-Trump Republican governor, received everything it requested within three days

• Oregon, Oklahoma, and New Jersey all got less than 10 percent of the equipment they asked for.

4/7/20 Rumor: President Donald Trump reportedly owns a stake in a company that produces hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug he has repeatedly touted as a coronavirus treatment even though his experts say there’s no strong evidence it works. 

• Trump “has a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine, The New York Times reported Monday. Fact check -mostly false

4/7/20  firing of the captain of a stricken aircraft carrier developed into a public relations disaster.

4/7/20  Wisconsin asked hundreds of thousands of voters to ignore a stay-at-home order in the midst of a pandemic to participate in Tuesday’s presidential primary election, becoming a test case for dozens of states struggling to balance public health concerns with a core pillar of democracy.

• The National Guard is helping to run voting sites across the state after thousands of election workers stepped down fearing for their safety. Dozens of polling places are closed, but those that are active opened

4/7/20 Trump falsely claimed that Wisconsin Democrats acted at the 11th hour to postpone the state’s April 7 election after he endorsed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly on April 3. In fact, Trump endorsed Kelly on Jan. 14; the Democratic governor acted because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Fact Check)

• Wisconsin hasn’t been run by Democrats since 2010. That’s the last time Democrats held the governor’s office and both houses of the Legislature.
• Republicans established their own trifecta in 2011, and maintained it until 2019, when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers was sworn in after defeating Republican incumbent Scott Walker.
• Since then, Wisconsin government has been defined by this split power, with Evers and the Legislature warring over matters big and small.
• 4/14/30 Kelly did not win

4/7/20 The United States on Tuesday recorded its highest coronavirus death toll in a single day with more than 1,800 virus-related fatalities, bringing the nation’s death toll to nearly 13,000, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

• The numbers show the U.S. now has almost 400,000 of the world’s 1.4 million reported COVID-19 cases

4/7/20 Fox News Fox News hosts and guests over the past several days have lauded the president’s handling of the global pandemic, and bashed anyone who raises concerns about the Trump administration’s response.

4/7/20 WASHINGTON — Trump blames the World Health Organization, choosing a new political enemy to attack and threatening to withhold funding from a premier health institution even as a deadly virus ravages nations around the globe. We’re going to put a hold on money spent to the W.H.O. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see,” Mr. Trump sought to denounce the W.H.O. for the very missteps and failures that have been leveled at him and his administration. Public health experts have said the president’s public denials of the virus’s dangers slowed the American response, which included delayed testing and a failure to stockpile protective gear. (Source) 

Fact Check Trump makes misleading claims about the WHO and his record on the coronavirus; Trump claimed that the World Health Organization downplayed the coronavirus and criticized his January 31 order restricting most travel between the United States and China.

• Trump is correct that the World Health Organization organization didn’t support his travel restrictions with China — the WHO opposes most international travel restrictions and sees them as ineffectual — but he overstated the case when he insinuated that the WHO downplayed the virus.

4/7/20 COVID-19 Is a Serious Threat … But So Are Memes Claiming It’s NOT (Fact)

• The story of a Texas woman who reportedly shared a Facebook post claiming the coronavirus outbreak was a hoax — and later reportedly died from the virus — reminds us of the dangerous potential of misinformation.

4/7/20 Trump complains that under Democratic plans for national expansion of early voting and voting by mail, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

4/7/20 Controversy over mail in voting

4/7/20 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu along with top officials and spy chiefs have had to go into quarantine after a top Israeli minister tested positive for coronavirus. Israel’s health minister has been accused of flouting his own lockdown rules after continuing to attend group prayers – despite a ban on gatherings. (Source)

• Israel’s health minister has been accused of flouting his own lockdown rules after continuing to attend group prayers – despite a ban on gatherings.
• Yaakov Litzman has tested positive for Covid-19, causing chaos in Israel’s highest political office as leaders working to tackle the virus crisis are forced into quarantine. He has faced accusations he pressured officials in his office to change their psychiatric reports in order to deem an alleged serial pedophile with ties to his own Gur sect as unfit for extradition to Australia.
• The controversial political figure had also attracted international condemnation for his homophobic pronouncements, including calling all LGBT people ‘sinners.’8523

4/7/20 Trump says he didn’t see Peter Navarro’s memo in January warning of the potential severity of the coronavirus to the U.S. The memo could have been the 3rd warning to the administration about COVID-19’s potential impact.

4/7/20 Fauci- We will get over this and addresses issues in the African American Community

4/7/20 Trumps claims Ivanka created 15 million jobs. or 10% of the jobs in the United States. Putting in perspective, as of January — before the coronavirus pandemic caused the US economy to start hemorrhaging jobs — about 152 million people in the United States were employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So Trump is claiming that his daughter created about 10 percent of all the jobs in the United States.  (Fact Check)

• During a White House event last November, Trump claimed that his daughter has “gotten jobs for” 14 million people. So, if one takes Trump’s statements at face value, she created a million jobs in just the past six months.
• The entire US economy only added a total of 6.2 million jobs from the beginning of Trump’s presidency through November of 2019. So Trump was effectively claiming that, but for the tireless efforts of his daughter, the United States would have lost nearly 8 million jobs before the coronavirus pandemic even began.

• Ivanka Trump and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty discussed the efforts being put into the development of America’s workforce and how it continues to drive employment numbers, during an exclusive interview with FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo at the World Economic Forum in Davos….are developing a national campaign that we’re unveiling in February (2020) to really open the aperture and expose people to all the different pathways available,” Trump said, adding: “apprenticeship is one of the great ones.”

4/8/20 Trump when asked about social distancing guidelines for Wisconsin election ‘Well, there you have to ask the people that,” Trump said. “You have a Democrat in Wisconsin as governor. Ask him. That’s his problem. Okay? He should be doing it. Again, some governors fail, and I won’t let them fail, because when they fail, I’ll help. But that’s run by Democrats right now. Okay? It’s run by Democrats.”

4/8/20 Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly’s trip last weekend to address sailors aboard the COVID-19-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt cost taxpayers more than $243,000 for the 35-hour round trip on a Gulfstream 550, according to a Navy official, who spoke anonymously. (Source)

4/8/20 Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears AP News 

• Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.

4/8/20 Trump files lawsuits against the New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN (The Hill)

• March 24, 202o federal court ruled against President Trump in a lawsuit that claims he has used government power to retaliate against media coverage and reporters he dislikes in violation of the First Amendment. (Read more)

4/8/20 Trump admits that mail in voting will not work for Republicans

4/8/20 Wisconsin: 3 Tubs of Absentee Ballots found at Post Office. 

4/8/20 Opinion Pieces both pro and con

• Why Is Trump’s Inspector General Purge Not a National Scandal?
• Trump’s IG firings: How ‘loyal’ should investigators be?

4/8/20 Eight senators led by Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Trump failed to give a sufficient explanation for firing Atkinson as required by law and “appears to have circumvented Congress’s role” by replacing him without 30 days notice.

• “Congress intended that inspectors general only be removed when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing or failure to perform the duties of the office, and not for reasons unrelated to their performance, to help preserve IG independence,” the senators wrote in a letter.

4/8/20 Trump Hotels Do Appear to Qualify for Coronavirus Bailout Benefits.

• President Donald Trump’s hotels in D.C., New York and Chicago all seem to qualify for benefits from the coronavirus bailout. So does his winery lodge in Virginia. Last month’s $2 trillion bailout bill barred President Donald Trump, his family or other officials from benefiting from one of the law’s giant loan programs. But as reporters noticed, there was no such language included for other elements of the bailout. Some provisions of the bailout are particularly beneficial to businesses like Trump’s. (Source)

4/8/20 TRUMP: “As of today, small business has processed more than $70 billion in guaranteed loans and will provide much-needed relief for nearly a quarter of a million businesses already … we’re way ahead of schedule.” —(News Briefing)

Fact Check

• 349 billion emergency lending program began operating Friday, but plagued by problems. Small-business owners have complained that they are unable to get through to the Small Business Administration or the banks to apply for loans or that they are being rejected by banks that say they are accepting applications only from businesses that are already customers of the bank.
• Two of the nation’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank, weren’t initially set up to take applications.
• The SBA’s loan processing system stopped working early in the week, making it impossible for loans to be approved and money distributed, while confusion spread about the documents that lenders needed from customers to complete loan transactions.

4/8/20 Opinion piece: The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal  published a column attacking President Donald Trump’s daily White House coronavirus task force briefings. n the editorial titled “Trump’s Wasted Briefings,” the conservative newspaper’s board said the pressers had started off as “a good idea to educate the public” about the pandemic but had now descended into “a boring show of President Vs. the press” after Trump decided to make them all about himself. (Wall Street Journal is owned the same company as FoX News)

4/8/20 Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio program shortly after discussing lowered projections for coronavirus deaths in the U.S.

• “Many people who are dying, both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway,” O’Reilly said. “And I don’t want to sound callous about that.” Hold on – you’re going to get hammered for that,” Hannity said. “Well, I don’t care. I mean, a simple man tells the truth,” O’Reilly said.
• Hannity said, “You mean people that have underlying conditions and compromised immune systems, any virus, you’re saying would’ve —” “Yes, yes, and not only that, they were damaged,” O’Reilly added. “For example, one of the reasons the death rate in Italy and Spain is 10 times higher than in the United States, 10 times

4/8/20  Mike Pence’s office changed course after declining for days to allow the nation’s top health officials to appear on CNN and discuss the coronavirus pandemic, in what was an attempt to pressure the network into carrying the White House’s lengthy daily briefings in full. (Read story here)

4/8/20 Trump Blames WHO For Virus

4/8/20 DC Weighs Loosening Guidelines for Some Exposed to Coronavirus

• The new proposal comes as the Trump administration looks toward rolling back some of the restrictive social distancing guidelines and restarting the nation’s stalled economy. (Source)

4/8/20 Virus Started in China but Europe brought it over

4/8/20 • House Democrats are demanding answers from the Trump administration on Jared Kushner’s role in controlling the supply chain of medical supplies. (Source) 

• Two committee chairs asked FEMA for ‘all communications between any FEMA employee and Jared Kushner’ on the issue
• States have complained about the lack of ventilators, personal protective gear and other necessary equipment as they battle the coronavirus
• Lawmakers request comes as President Trump tweeted Colorado would get 100 ventilators at the request of embattled GOP Sen. Cory Gardner Their request came as President Trump tweeted that Colorado would get 100 ventilators at the request of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, who is struggling in his re-election campaign.

4/8/20 Company Promised Cheap Ventilators to the Government, Never Delivered and Is Now Charging Quadruple the Price for New Ones (Source)

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it plans to pay Royal Philips N.V. $646.7 million for the new ventilators — paying more than $15,000 each. The first 2,500 units are to arrive before the end of May, HHS said, and the rest by the end of December.

4/9/20 Federal funding ends for COVID-19 testing sites.

4/9/20 Trump Tweets about his ratings

4/9/20 The research revealed a previously hidden spread of the virus that might have been detected if aggressive testing programs had been put in place.

• On Jan. 31, President Trump barred foreign nationals from entering the country if they had been in China — the site of the virus’s first known outbreak — during the previous two weeks.

4/9/20 The House Oversight and Reform Committee releases federal documents showing that the national stockpile of personal protective equipment is almost empty.

4/9/20 The Federal Reserve said it could pump $2.3 trillion into the economy through new and expanded programs it announced on Thursday, ramping up its efforts to help companies and state and local governments suffering financial damage from the coronavirus.

4/9/20 31% Can’t Pay the Rent: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Worse’

4/9/20 The outbreak aboard the Roosevelt has been, in many ways, a microcosm of the Defense Department’s handling of the virus within its ranks as military officials have weighed military preparedness with the health of its personnel.

4/9/2  Officials said there have now been 3,132 total cases of COVID-19, also known as the novel coronavirus, within the DoD: 1,898 military, 377 dependents, 448 civilians and 196 Defense Department contractors. In addition, 113 military members, 42 dependents, 36 civilians and 14 contractors have recovered, and eight DoD-connected personnel have died. Military Daily 

Of the current cases, 141 have required hospitalization, officials said: 64 service members, 47 civilians, 15 dependents and 15 contractors.

4/9/20 First relapse of COVID- 19 patient in Cambodia reported. 40 YO males that was treated and discharged approximately 15 days ago.

4/9/20 WASHINGTON — The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is working on a possible plan to cut U.S. aid to the World Health Organization, administration officials said Wednesday, as President Donald Trump tries to deflect blame for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

• Administration officials said they also plan to look into the timeline of the WHO’s reaction to the coronavirus after it first appeared in China, as well as “links” to China.

4/9/20 The virus has killed more people in the Navajo Nation than in the whole of New Mexico.

4/9/20 Citing the pandemic, Saudi Arabia announced a cease-fire in the war in Yemen starting today, which could pave the way toward ending the five-year conflict. Separately, as many as 150 members of the Saudi royal family are believed to have contracted the virus.

4/9/20 The growing number of cases has raised interest in state guidelines outlining who should be prioritized for lifesaving medical treatments in an emergency.

• But certain standards that Alabama had on the books are discriminatory, the federal health department’s Office of Civil Rights said on Wednesday. Albama’s criteria, contained in a 2010 document that set out the state’s guidance for rationing ventilators in an emergency, suggested that doctors consider withholding advanced treatment based on patients’ intellectual disabilities, with “profound mental retardation” and “moderate to severe dementia” weighing against them.
• The guidelines also referred to age as a potential category for exclusion, which raised questions of age discrimination, according to the review.

4/9/20 Hospital in France had to stop an experimental treatment using hydroxychloroquine on at least one coronavirus patient after it became a “major risk” to their cardiac health (Source) 

4/9/20 Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’ (Source)

• Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

4/9/20 Malaysia reports 109 new coronavirus infections, raising its total to 4,228

4/9/20 As the coronavirus disrupts the global supply chain, scientists in Africa and Latin America have been told by manufacturers that orders for testing kits can’t be filled for months, because almost everything they produce is going to the U.S. or Europe.

4/9/20 All countries report steep price increases, from testing kits to masks.

4/9/20 Goldman Sachs CEO gets 19% raise, bumping his pay to $27.5 million

4/9/20 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is taking additional steps to provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to support the economy. The money will target American households and businesses, as well as local governments besieged by the coronavirus outbreak. Read More 

4/9/20 $250 billion package to replenish a small business loan program created by the stimulus law has stalled in the Senate after Republicans and Democrats clashed over what should be included.

4/9/20 Trump and his Republican friends have mounted an aggressive strategy to fight what the administration’s own health officials view as one of the most effective ways to make voting safer amid the spread of the virus: the expanded use of mail-in ballots

4/10/20 But with no vaccine, no reliable drug therapies and no widely available test to tell who might have been exposed to the virus, “shelter at home” orders remain the only reliable tool in slowing the spread. Mindful of that, public health officials warned that, in most places, now was not the time to ease up.

4/10/20 Medical workers at a Detroit hospital have described being at a breaking point during the coronavirus pandemic as they manage a flood of patients and scramble for resources. About five patients have died from the virus during each 12-hour shift at Detroit Medical Center’s Sinai-Grace and there aren’t always enough body bags or refrigerators for them (The Daily Beast)

4/10/20 Trump at the White House announced that he would draft an economic advisory council focused on reopening the country. When a reporter asked him what metrics he would use to make the decision, Trump replied, “The metrics right here” and pointed at his head. (Source)

4/10/20The United Kingdom, announced its worst single-day death toll, with a further 980 people who had contracted coronavirus losing their lives in the  previous 24 hours

4/10/20 CDC Reports

• Total cases: 459,165
• Total deaths: 16,570
• Jurisdictions reporting cases: 55 (50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands)

4/10/20 The White House launches an unusual attack on the congressionally funded Voice of America, the U.S. broadcaster that for decades has provided independent news reporting around the world. AP News 

Trump Campaign Video 

4/10/20 Trump Campaign launches Misleading video of Biden The Trump campaign ad misrepresents Joe Biden’s statements on the Trump administration’s travel restrictions, and leaves the false impression that former U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke, a Chinese-American, is a Chinese official. Fact Check

• Also wrongly made it seem as if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had accidentally endorsed Trump.But the clip was edited to cut out the second part of Biden’s sentence. What the former vice president actually said was this: “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.” Biden had called for an end to “negative attacks” in his primary contest with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Fact Check)

4/10/20  Travel Restriction update: Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, told us he hasn’t seen any evidence to support the president’s claims. Previous studies of viruses with a reproduction number of 1.9 or higher, meaning the average number of other people one person infects, have shown the restrictions have to be very strict to have an effect, he said. Travel restrictions “can have an impact if you shut down 90% of all travel,” Omer said. But, “even then, it delays it a little bit but it doesn’t stop it.

• Trump, March 5, Fox News town hall: But as soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, “What’s going on with China? How many people are coming in?” … [Y]ou both know that I closed the borders very early. …. You know, it saved a lot of lives.
• Trump, March 17, coronavirus task force briefing: We closed it down to China, the source, very, very early. Very, very early. Far earlier than even the great professionals wanted to do. And I think, in the end, that’s going to be — that will have saved a tremendous number of lives.
• Trump, March 24, Fox News virtual town hall: I made a decision to close off to China. … Thousands and thousands of more people — probably tens of thousands would be dead right now if I didn’t make that decision.
• 4/4/20 There were 1,300 direct flights to 17 cities before President Trump’s travel restrictions. Since then, nearly 40,000 Americans and other authorized travelers have made the trip, some this past week and many with spotty screening. Read more about flights 
• Trump, April 7, task force briefing: And I was called all sorts of names when I closed it down to China. …. If I didn’t do it — if I didn’t do that, we would’ve had hundreds of thousands more people dying.

Concerning ventilators, Trump recently: “A lot of them will be coming at a time when we won’t need them as badly.”

4/10/20 Singapore suspends the use of Zoom for online education  after hackers hijacked a lesson and showed obscene images to students.

4/10/20 Trump at a 2 hour press conference.. goes on about how he can override states, he stopped the virus, he will open, the virus is a genius brilliant, Fake news, everyone has ventilator, everyone has testing…

 4/10/20 one-third of the worldwide total — America is the center of the global crisis. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, pointed to revised models showing the estimated deaths dropping to 61,000 deaths from 86,000, but warned “there is still a significant amount of disease.”

4/10/20 Lindsay Graham blames China

Day 101  

4/11/20  Spain confirmed 510 new deaths, the lowest daily toll since March 23, while it added 4,830 new cases

4/11/20 Iceland has tested 10% of the population. But some places, such as tiny Iceland, Europe’s most sparsely populated country – pop. 364,134, broadly equivalent to the number of people in Tulsa, Oklahoma – may be better placed to deliver some types of coronavirus information, and even answers than most, at least in the short term, according to public health experts, international government officials and others involved in responding to the outbreak.

4/11/20 4 Plans for Reopening: the major plans for what comes after social distancing. You can read them, too. There’s one from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer. Full story 

4/11/20 Trump erroneously described a New York Times article, falsely stating that it said the coronavirus originated in Europe and suggesting that it had no named sources.

Fact Check Times’ story never said that the coronavirus originated in Europe. Instead, the article details research findings that suggest a majority of the first cases of the coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, in New York City resulted from travelers from Europe.

4/11/10 Trump reportedly said he would reject a bailout package if it included aid to keep the US Postal Service functioning. Right in line with no Mail in Ballots. (Source)

• At least 19 USPS workers have died from COVID-19, and around 500 have been infected, USPS leaders told lawmakers.

4/12/20 180,458 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in New York, including more than 98,308 in New York City.

• 8,627 people with COVID-19 have died in the state, which has the largest number — around 34% — of confirmed cases in the U.S.
• COVID-19 has killed more than 109,000 worldwide

4/12/20 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he plans to issue an executive order next week with guidelines on reopening businesses in the state. (CNN)

4/12/20 All States Under Disaster Declaration

4/13/20 Russia’s president acknowledged that his country risks being overwhelmed by the coronavirus. Monday, Russia’s total number of confirmed cases of Covid-19  had reached 18,328, double the level of five days earlier. The number of deaths stood at 148, a number widely seen as an undercount amid reports of other causes of death being declared for people who were ill with Covid-like symptom… country risks being overwhelmed (NY Times) 

Press Briefing April 13, 2020

This was a 2 hour press briefing in which Trump stated he had

•  “total” authority to decide how and when to reopen the economy after weeks of tough social distancing guidelines aimed at fighting the new coronavirus. But governors from both parties were quick to push back, noting they have primary responsibility for ensuring public safety in their states and would decide when it’s safe to begin a return to normal operations. (AP News)
• Donald Trump used a White House press briefing on coronavirus to play a propaganda-like video he said was produced by his aides. Prior to airing the video, which comprised clips from his preferred network, Fox News, he said: ‘Most importantly, we’re going to get back on to the reason we’re here, which is the success we’re having’ (Guardian News Wire) 
•  President Donald Trump opened the April 13 daily coronavirus task force briefing with a video that more had to do with polishing Trump’s image than delivering new developments in the fight against COVID-19.  “The media minimized the risk from the start,” were the video’s opening words. 

4/13/20 Fact Checking via CNN

4/13/20   Fact Checking: Donald Trump’s White House coronavirus briefing video: Long on praise, short on facts.

• Trump played a video summary that cherry-picked highlights of his coronavirus track record.
• The video’s sole entry for February underscored the lack of action during a critical period.
• The video took quotes out of context and excluded Trump’s comments during the time when he downplayed the crisis.

Trump Campaign Video 

4/13/20 President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is suing a Wisconsin TV station for running an anti-Trump commercial that pieces together audio clips of the president talking about the coronavirus outbreak in a way they argue is misleading and false. “The advertisement … does not just contain false and defamatory statements about President Trump — it is far more insidious and, ultimately, far more dangerous,” the lawsuit reads. “The advertisement was produced through the use of digital technology by taking audio clips from Trump Campaign events and piecing those clips together to manufacture a blatantly false statement that was never said by President Trump.” (The Hill)

4/13/20 Trump’s re-election campaign posted this minute-long web ad Thursday raising questions about Hunter Biden’s deals with Chinese business partners and accusing Joe Biden of “standing up for China” and selling out America. (Source)

4/13/20 at Least 19 Children at a Chicago Shelter for Immigrant Detainees Have Tested Positive for COVID-19 (Propublica)

4/14/20 Trump likens Democratic governors to mutineers.

“If it is your authority to open, why wasn’t it your authority to close?” (Cuomo)

4/14/20 Trump  told reporters that the United States will pause funding to the World Health Organization while his administration reviews how the agency responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

• Blaming the agency for the rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases worldwide. 
• U.N. health agency sided with “political correctness” instead of supporting travel restrictions that could have halted the spread of the disease earlier.

4/14/20 New York City revised its death toll, raising the number of dead to more than 10,000.

4/14/20 Trey Hollingsworth (R-IN) “There is no zero harm choice here. We are going to have look Americans in the eye and say ‘we are making the best decisions for the most Americans possible’ and the answer to that to get Americans back to work, to get Americans back to their businesses….. Sure, some might argue that the bigger insult is to suggest that people should be willing to die to save the economy—which won’t be in a great place if infections and deaths start surging again as a result of relaxed restrictions—but potato, potahto.

4/14/20 The Justice Department intervenes on behalf of a small Mississippi church in a lawsuit challenging the city of Greenville’s public health order that restricts church gatherings due to the pandemic.

• The Justice Department’s actions come after Attorney General Barr, (Fox News) interview (on Apr. 8), said his department will “be keeping a careful eye” on whether states violate Americans’ constitutional rights through public health measures to address the pandemic.

4/14/20 Cuomo that “the worst is over” in the coronavirus pandemic, and he announced an alliance with six other Northeastern governors to explore how to eventually lift restrictions Governors from New York, (D) New Jersey (D), Connecticut (D), Pennsylvania (D), Delaware (D), Massachusetts (R) and Rhode Island (D) said they would begin to draw up a plan for when to reopen businesses and schools, and how quickly to allow people to return to work safely, the timeline remained unclear.

Worldwide, the number of COVID-19 cases has topped 1.9 million, and more than 125,000 people have died.

4/14/20 RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Liberty University has profited from the COVID-19 pandemic by refusing to refund thousands of dollars in room and board and other fees owed to students after the school moved classes online last month

• The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg accuses the university — one of the nation’s largest and most prominent evangelical institutions — of purporting to remain open so it could refuse to return fees paid by students and their parents for the remainder of the spring semester.
• The lawsuit also accuses Liberty and its president, Jerry Falwell Jr., of putting students at risk by telling students they were welcome to return to campus following spring break in March.

4/14/20 School meal rollbacks are voided: A federal court struck down a 2018 Agriculture Department rule that reversed nutrition standards for sodium and whole grains.

4/14/20 The San Diego City Attorney’s Office announces that it served nearly 50 gun violence restraining orders since the beginning of March against people who posed a threat to themselves or others….concerns of domestic abuse and gun violence among residents confined to the close quarters of their homes. with 26 orders obtained during March and 20 within the first 10 days of April, (Source) 

4/15/20 Hong Kong (CNN) China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. (CNN)

• Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.

Conclusion: The more one reads the more facts have become apparent. Trump’s defense has been to continually use the daily press briefings  as a platform to reiterate his ‘genius’ his handling of the virus, to smear media (Fake News), Democrats (lame and Do Nothing) Governors, China, WHO, CDC, Obama, lie, dismiss, deny the extent of the coronavirus. He has taken no responsibility, in fact has fired, demoted and sidelined experts that have not agreed with his message.

Instead of uniting states he unleashed a suck up mentality in order to get supplies, reporting they are on their own. He has publicly ‘dissed’ governors and even said he expected the nation’s governors to be more “appreciative” of his efforts and ‘play nice’ He even said to Mike Pence to not call governors back. 

Because of a lack of consistent message the Corona Virus was allowed to spread.

Much of this is from his turnover of staff. When the experts are gone and ‘Acting Personal’ in place there is no consistency in messaging except to Praise and Agree with Trump. Basically what you have is a bunch of Temps running our government. (Article on Acting Secretaries)

While loyalty is important to put his son in law in charge of the CDC task force in a shadow team. It doesn’t add up. I have only posted a few of Trumps staff that are gone.

His turnover is the highest ever in any presidency in fact 85% of his ‘A Team’  as of April 7, 2020. What business can run profitably with a 85% turnover? (Source)

As to FAKE News, all new media including his beloved FOX have lead with inflammatory lead lines. But in the fact checking, the Right (FOX, Breitbart) seem to have had more misinformation. The problem is FOX only reports what Trump wants you to hear. They don’t report on number of deaths, global handling and deal with lies such as the Ivanka made 15 million jobs. Ergo, Fake News.

Obsessed with his TV ratings and stock sell offs, has shown it is all about him. Our public health is of minor importance. The only reason he changed his tune because he would not even have a chance of being re-elected. Even at that point by the time he declared a National Emergency on March 13, several cities and states had already declared emergency status.

Based on all of the above, he screwed up. He started out right by organizing a Task Force and it went down from there, mainly due to him.

Resources

• Why Does the Trump Administration Keep Seizing Hospitals’ Coronavirus Supplies
• Timeline of Coronavirus Outbreaks
• Timeline of the Coronavirus (Just Security) 
• Coronavirus Stay at Home 
• Why did Trump Target HHS Inspector General 
• Brookings Institute Public health Timeline 
• Corona Virus Started in China but Europe became the Global Hub
• Coronavirus Responses by State
• How Testing Failures Allowed the Coronavirus To Sweep the USBreitbart Posts of Lies 
• False Claim About CDC’s Global Anti-Pandemic Work
• Partly false claim: Trump fired entire pandemic response team in 2018
• Coronavirus coverage: where the media have gone wrong
• Post-impeachment, Donald Trump moves loyalists into top jobs, pushes out others
• While it’s not accurate to say that Trump “cut” funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is accurate to say he tried.
• World Health Organization